Annular Solar Eclipse, 31st May 2003

Not being a particular "shadow chaser" before 1999, I was unaware that Great Britain would have its second eclipse in 4yrs until I read a book about eclipses taken by one of my colleagues on the Cherbourg expedition. This described the unusual circumstances of the 2003 event, when an annular eclipse would be visible at dawn from the far north of Scotland, the Western Isles, the Faeroe Islands and Iceland itself.

I had originally intended to go to Iceland with two of the travellers we met in 2001, but in the end circumstances got just too complex so I left them to it. Instead, I begged the keys for the tower of my local church, set the alarm very early, and so ended up with a glorious view of the entire horizon at 4:30am (yawn!). There was considerable low cloud, so I was slightly pessimistic, but eventually I became aware of a very strange blood-red horn projecting out of the mist - the eclipsed sun! There was never going to be any chance of seeing annularity (too far south) nor indeed the maximum partial phase (as the sun had not risen then) but a crescent sun so near the horizon was really something special.

I took a whole series of pictures, both close-up with the 1200mm lens and wider angle with a 300mm zoom, to get the full effect of just the sun itself and also its context amongst the trees on the horizon. Unfortunately, the camera decided to have a glitch just at this moment and so all the shots after the first frame were completely blank!! Perhaps it was fortunate I didn't go to Iceland after all - to have returned with nothing due to equipment failure would have been frustrating in the extreme. As it was, my wife also took some shots at a different (ground-level!) location looking across fields so at least we had something to show of the event. No filtration was needed with any of the pictures, due to effect of the cloud which produced quite safely-viewable images even when totality had ended. It also gave a superb colour variation, from deep-red to almost white, which greatly enhanced the experience.

So, not as spectacular as going to see the full thing, but interesting nonetheless. And did my friends see anything? - yes, they did! Low cloud divided at just the right moment, then closed in again afterwards - I've always said they have the luck of the devil!!

  Pictures of the eclipse