This morning there was a solar eclipse. From Auckland, I was able to see the sun about 87% covered by the moon just before 10:30 this morning. My girlfriend Eileen managed to get 4 pairs of solar viewing glasses from Stardome observatory last night (apparently the last 4 they had at the time), and I took 3 with me to work to share around.

I managed to take a few mediocre photos of it by putting the solar filter in front of my iPhone’s camera lens. Most of the time it was all glare, but if there was just the right amount of cloud coverage you could photograph the crescent shape. Here’s the best photo that I managed to take:

Meanwhile, Eileen was viewing it from Auckland Uni and sent me this great photo of a projection of the eclipse, which shows how you can safely view it if you lack the equipment to look directly at it:

Like she said:

It is quite neat – holding the sun in the palm of your hand

On a related note, here’s a photo from earlier this year that she took of a similar projection showing the transit of Venus: