2004 - Pictures from Madagascar

What the camera sees.........
I have seen the question raised many times on the internet as to whether it is possible to view a partial eclipse at sunset or sunrise. It can only be done safely under very special circumstances when the cloud or atmosphere filters the intense light from the sun thus enabling you to look briefly without safety filters etc. This partial eclipse was totally invisible to the naked eye. No one else around us realised what was going on. The locals saw us with our eclipse shades and filters on the cameras and scopes and giggled "eclipsos" at us. But they still could not see anything. Because there was a massive language problem we had decided not to try and explain what was going on. We just did not want to take any chances on anyone having their eyes permanently damaged, so we kept quite. I would have loved to share and explain the event to some of the locals but without the neccessary language fluency and because there were so many children around we just felt it was not worth the risk. During the recent venus transit which I saw from Ireland (what no cloud?) I happily let people look through the scope and the eclipse shades after an introductory discussion on the finer points of keeping your eyesight intact.
I really should learn some languages.

Photo:Brian Seales.