Pictures from the June 10, 2002 Annular Solar Eclipse - taken from atop Yankee Ridge about 2 miles south of Urbana, Illinois right at sunset.

All pictures were taken with Kodak ASA400 color print film, using a 135mm lens with a 2x teleconverter (yielding an effective focal length of 270mm) attached to a 35mm Fujica ST701 camera. It's a sequence of 7 pictures taken just before sunset as the sun broke thru the clouds (finally!). You can clearly see that the moon has taken a healthy bite out of the sun at the bottom lower left. The last 3 pictures show the sun and invisible moon starting to dip below the horizon. At this point, I had shot all 24 frames of the roll, so my wife and I just sat and watched the remaining slice of sun disappear below the horizon, marvelling at what we were privilged to have just witnessed. At 8:22PM, the last dot of sunlight vanished.

!! August 18, 2002, Astronomer James Kaler selects Picture No. 2 for his SKYLIGHTS Photo of the Week! Click on the following for the archive: http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/arc/sk081802.html [photo copyright 2002, P.L. Nelson] - Picture No.1, breaking thru the clouds

contact: lnelson at uiuc.edu