Astronomy Club: Viewing the solar eclipse

On Tuesday, 25 October 2022, the Gimnazija Vič astronomy club organised a special project to make the most of the partial solar eclipse which could be seen from Slovenia. This phenomenon occurs when the Earth, the Moon and the Sun are perfectly aligned in the same plane of rotation. To the observer, it appears as if the Moon (partially) covers the surface of the Sun. This time, it lasted about 2 hours, starting at 11:18, and reaching its maximum at 12:20, when 0.36% of the Sun was obscured. The next solar eclipse, although weaker, will be visible from Europe in 2025, and a total eclipse will not be visible until 2081.

Unfortunately, the weather was not very good for observing the event, as we woke up to an inclement day. However, hoping that we might still see something, we set up our telescopes outside the school. We adapted them to observe the Sun by fitting them with home-made filters that block out some of the sunlight, as the Sun should never be observed directly with the naked eye. The clouds turned out to be a vexing problem since they blocked the view throughout a good portion of the eclipse.

Despite the bad weather, we managed to take a few photos during the eclipse and, as well as using the telescope (black-coloured image), we were able to observe the Sun by projecting it onto paper (blue-coloured image), and through protective glasses (green coloured image).

Barbara Makovec