Martijn's astronomy pages

October 3, 2005, Moon, Earth and the Sun aligned. From parts of the earth, one could see an annular solar eclipse. This means that on some places on earth, the moon covered the sun, but not completely, as the disk of the moon was smaller than the sun's. This is because the moon was relatively far from the earth, and hence the apparent size smaller. Unfortunately, from my site (Utrecht, The Netherlands), no "ring" was visible and the moon only covered about part of the sun's disk. The following image from Nasa, shows where the eclipse was visible.

The red dot marks Utrecht, and it lies just above the 60% line. My own calculations using images I took at maximum eclipse show that in fact 56% coverage was attained.

Using an Canon EOS350D camera and a white light filter, I took pictures during the eclipse.

I also took some pictures using the Meade ETX105 with the EOS350D at prime focus.