I have to share some photos I captured, they are mildly creative and not of the sharpest resolution because I took on the challenge to document this eclipse using my handheld iPhone 6S and relying on later image processing. If you want some really professional-looking photography I encourage you to vist the work of Tim Hamilton who traveled to Spring City from Chattanooga with some nice camera gear, and my good friend who lives over in North Carolina now, and also does some stunning photography, Bill Campbell.
(Note: I am not sure whether you need to log into Facebook to see these links.)
But first where and why.
The photos of Tim Hamilton and mine were taken at First Presbyterian Church in Spring City where I am the pastor. I want to brag before I get into the eclipse.
The only reason I find myself at Spring City is because of the people in this congregation. They have amazing faith and commitment to surviving. To the greatest degree they represent the future of the Church, people committed to action revealing God's grace in a world of hurt. Our pocketbooks are thin and we face constant doubt, but we have come from the "darkest elements of fire and brimstone condemnation - I've had enough and will never go back to a church again", melancholy, take it all for granted and become a shining light on a hill for grace to be a light on the hill. I love them all!
The parking lot of our building is about 400 yards from the centerline of the path of the shadow of the moon, so we had 2 minutes 38 seconds (I think) about 1 second less than maximum time duration.
Our congregation at First Presbyterian Church invited all of our Presbyterian friends in the East Tennessee who desired to come, and come they did, many from Chattanooga. We had visitors from Northside Presbyterian (whose pastor in Paul Rader), the congregation that has been home and supportive of me since I came to Chattanooga in 1999, fifteen members of Second Presbyterian where I led a homeless ministry for about 18 months (whose pastor is Micael Phoenix),and Rivermont (whose pastor is Clay Davis and whose pastoral associate is Lina Hart ), and Northminster Presbyterian (whose pastor is Laura Becker). It was so great to see you all! forgive me if I overlooked anyone.
Folks at First Presbyterian Spring City made it happen, among them were Lee Booker and Judy Blackwell and their children, Georgette Boozer and her daugther, Stefanie Cate-Lynn and her family, as well as many other of our almost 30 congregants and all our wonderful youth. We grilled burgers, hot dogs and brats, offered free parking and met folks who drove all day and night from places such as Williamsport and the Pittsburgh area of Pennsylvania (I met a fellow who worked in Engineering at Alcoa Technical Center where I spent about seven years before transferring to San Diego!), upper New York State, Boston, Richmond, VA, Washington, DC, Misissippi and Alabama, and who knows how many other places. A professor from the University of Alabama brought his 4 inch reflecting telescope and projected nice images of the sun, revealing sun spots, and I believe the track of the international space station that happened to be crossing the field of view. What a fellowship.
Here are my photographs by iPhone.
First a little background.
The safest way to view the eclipse (and sun) if you did not have good viewing glasses (I did, but did not use them for these photographs), is with a projection device called a "pinhole camera." Basically it is a piece of aluminum foil, or other opaque material pierced with a tiny circular pinhole mounted on a short cardboard or PVC tube. When aligned with the sun one sees a projected image of the sun on the ground or a viewing paper. (See Tim Hamilton's Facebook page.)
If the hole is not perfectly circular you will get some distortion in the image (spherical distortion). This happens for many reasons, but is caused essentially when the periphery of the lens does not behave the same way the central part behaves. You get fuzzy images, fuzzy edges in stead of sharp edges. For example if you pierced the aluminum foil with a sharpened pencil rather than carefully with a needle with the foil mounted on a firm substrate, you may get a ragged edge on your hole. Regardless, any "aperture" can be used to image the sun when the moon is eclipsing it. The image may be fuzzy or distorted. (A pinhole camera is a great and simple science/art project to photograph objects such as still life's.)
Here are two images I shot with my iPhone, one about 3-5 minutes before totality, the next within a minute of totality. I used the apertures formed randomly by overlapping leaves in the walnut and interloping hackberry tree about 20-40 feet overhead in our parking lot. You can see the crescent shape of the sun shadowed by the moon.
(Sorry about the dark spot, probably a drop of diesel or oil from my 96 Dodge truck, obtained courtesy of my brother Mark). You can see several images since there were many variable sized "apertures" in the trees above me. This shot is about three to five minutes before totality.
Here is a shot taken about a minute before totality in another part of the parking lot. ( I was standing on the other side of the shadow.) You can see the crescent has narrowed appreciably, as well as multiple images from the multiple apertures formed by the tree leaves.
Sorry the magnification is not the same in both. But, as a scientist, I was impressed!
If you do not know me visually, I'm 98% a fair-skinned descendant of British, Welsh, Irish and Scot lineage (the rest Scandinavian and German), mostly immigrants from Sotheast Georgia near Savannah. Although I do have about 2% South-Central African blood in my veins from the regions of Nambia, Botswana, Congo and S. Africa I retain no benefit of it in the sun. I use a lot of sunscreen and often a hat in the sun.
A few minutes earlier at about 50% of totality, I was facing the sun, standing talking to someone. I looked down and realized the sun was shining through the open rectangular weave of my straw hat and projecting multiple images of the sun onto my red T-shirt (you can see it unshaded in the lower left corner) like so:
Pretty amazing physics lesson, I think.
Now here is my shot at totality. The camera of the iPhone is pretty good but not designed for high quality imaging under extreme illuminating conditions. It has a nice pixel density, but not the best you can get using a quality SLR. Also, my iPhone was handheld - no time for a tripod. This means it is subject to blurring due to my inability to be perfectly still. (Something that has always afflicted me.)
In addition, the intensity (brightness) of the corona of the sun is quite high so my image is overexposed, and slight hand motion blurred it a little. (My brother Mark, who spent quite a few years as an atmospheric scientist doing image processing and professional writing is better able to explain all this than me who went towards materials science after my physics degree.)
I shot this photo, hand held, and used the Apple's app, Photos, to do some image processing. If I had professional Photoshop I imagine I could do more. But I played with under exposure, contrast and brightness, etc., to get this hand-held iPhone 6S shot of Totality:
The image is grainy because of low light, but the view is close to what the eye saw.
Notice four things:
First, you can the bell tower of the church and a power line running lower left botom toward the upper center-right (:-)).
Second, the image of the eclipsed sun is distorted into an oval probably because I was not holding my camera perfectly perpendicular to the line of sight, but you can see the corona (not nearly as nice as Bill Campbell's shot). Because of the brightness of the corona, over exposure and limited pixels, the corona looks more like an annular ring. Visually it was far more fantastic because the central region of the sun is pitch-black and the edge very sharp.
Third, as soon as totality came, the contrails of a jet aircraft traveling south (towards Atlanta?) became visible. You can see the double contrails.
Finally, If you look at the edge region of the image where the power line intersects the right side, you see the planet Venus (I think that is the right planet).
All in all, quite an amateur show for an iPhone capturing images of an eclipse not to be seen here on this ground for quite a while.
I will make an effort to post some photographs of the folks and ground-based activity, but I was directing parking up to about 5 minutes before totality. Tim Hamilton's video captures the atmosphere!
Grace and peace!
Henry
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