Photos of the 1999 eclipse.
On 11th August 1999, there was a total solar eclipse. This happens when the moon lines up exactly with the sun, and blocks out its light.
Totality only lasted for two minutes, but the whole eclipse from start to finish lasted a couple of hours.
These photos were taken from a small village called Mullion in Cornwall, England. Totality in Southwest Cornwall and South Devon started, depending on exactly where you were, a few seconds either side of 11:11 BST (10:11 UT).
I used a Sony Mavica FD7 digital camera to take these photos. It has a 10x zoom, and stores it images on a floppy disk. To reduce the glare of the sun during the partial phases of the eclipse, I covered the cameras lens with a mylar filter for some of these shots.
The weather was not ideal, although we were lucky to see the total eclipse at all. The moon first started to cover up the sun (first contact) at around 10:00 BST, but the first shot I could get was at 10:53, when the clouds parted for a few minutes. As it got darker, it looked like we would not see the total eclipse at all, but shortly after the moon's shadow covered us, the clouds parted again, allowing us to see the total eclipse. It was still covered lightly by clouds, so the photo is quite dark.
The partial eclipse at 10:53 BST
The partial eclipse at 11:03 BST
The partial eclipse at 11:08 BST
The partial eclipse at 11:10 BST
The total eclipse at 11:11 BST. The image is dark because of the cloud cover and the Sony Mavica not being great in low light situations.
The partial eclipse at 11:13 BST
All photos of the eclipse are Copyright © Jeremy Stein 1999. You may copy, store, and distribute the images. You may not sell them, pass them off as your own work, or distribute them without the copyright notice.
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