Solar Eclipse 2012

One benefit about being on the West Coast is that we got a good show last night!  It was supposed to be really good in Oregon, if it wasn't cloudy (haha, yeah).  Luckily, J's Uncle Nick and Aunt Ashley got this pic from the Oregon Coast.

Photo Credit: Uncle Nick

We were a little low in latitude for the full eclipse, but we still got a good portion.  Here's what you missed (or didn't depending on where you were).

Between 6 and 7p, we were having a solar eclipse, where the moon is positioned between earth and the sun.  It started getting dark at 6p, and I thought, "Wow, I didn't realize it was that late already."  Then I remembered that I had forgotten about the solar eclipse.  I went out immediately to our apartment's wall of sun and started doing science.

It's hard to explain what's going on and expect kids not to want to stare at the sun with their bare eyes (please don't ever stare into the sun unless you have special filters).

What we did was collected to pieces of scrap paper and made a small pinhole in one.  We held the paper with a pinhole so it casted a shadow on the other piece of paper that we held down with our feet.  On the piece of paper we shadowed, we saw a sliver of light, which eventually grew into about 3/4 of a circle (see picture below).

If the sun wasn't being blocked by the moon, we'd see a full circle of light.  At different stages of the eclipse, we'd see variation in the slivers of light.

Sorry, we were caught unprepared leading up to the full-ish eclipse (ie. more pictures of various sized crescents). It happened between dinner and getting ready for bed, which is usually not the best time for our family, on a pretty busy weekend.