I'm so annoyed. I'm so annoyed. Hang on a moment, I'll be back -- SAVE DRAFT! So here's the thing. I was about 200km out of Reykjavik. I was promised 98% coverage. I specifically drove here (no sacrifice really) for a wonderful cloudless experience. I took this picture about a minute before the moon was supposed to eclipse sun in fullest. I intended to make a triumphant, snotty, bitchy post about how none of you happened to be in the closest major population center in the world to totality, and I did. Then something happened: namely, my eclipse was missing in action. That's about as dark as it got. In Iceland. A few hundred km from the totality path. What the fuck? I have a couple of other pictures in which you can see a big bright ball, then a ring of orange, and then light spreading out from the big bright ball. This is at :45. Someone please explain this to me.
Hmm. Yep, you should have 98%. We got 93% in Trondheim. Stavanger where I flew out from in the morning had total cloud coverage with rain -- they got nothing. Trondheim was about 2/3 covered, I was fortunate to be in my car chasing the openings. Still, it didn't get as dark as I expected. It was noticeably darker, like a big storm rolling in, but with 93% coverage it seems like it should be only 7% bright, but it felt more like 50%.
Don't forget that hours pass between the first contact of the lunar disk with the edge of the sun and the arrival of maximum eclipse. That is plenty of time for eyes to adjust, and eyes are incredibly adaptive. A normal sunlit day is ten times brighter than an overcast day, and maximum direct sunlight is ten times brighter than that. And even an overcast day is ten times brighter than a well-lit office space. Imgur scrubs the EXIF data from your photos, so I can't check, but if you have very similar photos from times close to and far from totality, you might be able to get some information about the brightness level from the exposure settings. I am perplexed as to why flagamuffin got a no-show. The sun does not appear at all crescent-shaped in his photo. The timestamp is "2015-03-20 09:39:39," ruining my theory that he had one too many and slept through the eclipse.with 93% coverage it seems like it should be only 7% bright, but it felt more like 50%
Yes, your first query was akin to "is it plugged in," but I gamely answered it. I was sober. And had the right time. I did not get the wrong partial eclipse. (And to think you gave me a pass on the astronaut/pencil test.) The crescent shape was nonexistent. I did get a sort of circular ring effect that was very cool and far more what you would expect from a solar eclipse ... but still underwhelming. It was present when I took the picture; my phone fuzzed it. My eyes definitely adjusted -- I had been sitting in the car because it was 28 degrees out, writing postcards, and when I got out and joined my friends at :35, I said "wow look how dark it is" like a dope but it turned out they hadn't even noticed. Seriously. Too gradual. Also there was a most-beautiful-on-the-continent waterfall 200 feet away.
I guess there's no mystery then, the moon was in front of the sun, but the exposed solar edge was bright enough to dazzle your camera and provide apparent daylight. The lesson is that we should not compare 100% sun to 2% sun, we should compare 2% sun to 0% sun. I took a test photo directly at the sun just now using the front camera of my iPhone 5s and compared the exposure settings to your image. flagamuffin
iPhone 6
Software 8.2
ISO 32
Exposure Mode Auto
Exposure Program Program Normal
Metering Mode Multi-segment
Exposure Time 33333/1000000 (0.0333)
FNumber F2.2
Focal Length 2.65 mm
Despite shooting through a dirty office window, my exposure was over a hundred times shorter than yours, suggesting a much brighter sun. wasoxygen
iPhone 5s
Software 8.1.3
ISO 50
Exposure Mode Auto
Exposure Program Program Normal
Metering Mode Multi-segment
Exposure Time 187/1000000 (0.000187)
FNumber F2.4
Focal Length 2.15 mm
Can confirm, tried experiencing it from Stavanger, where I live. Sigh. Ended up watching tv coverage from Svalbard while at the gym. Looked nice from there though, what coverage did Svalbard have?
Eclipses notoriously avoid trip reports. If you would've told me why you were heading to Iceland, we could have prevented this. But seriously, props for getting out there, I'd love to visit that island someday.