By now you have probably seen a ton of photos of the recent solar eclipse that most of Europe saw. Here in northern Estonia, we got an eclipse that shaded 80% of the sun. Of course, I was there to try and capture this rare event. I went to one of my favorite beaches, The Secret Beach. It also has a nice, clear sea view towards the sun. We were fortunate to have clear skies this evening.
This was where I stayed for the eclipse.
A view of the sun. This was a couple of mins before the start.
To see the sun at its best, I used the ND(neutral density) filter, which is really dark. I could also watch the sun with my own eyes with that.
Here we go, the eclipse has started... A small chunk has been bitten away. The 80% eclipse happened over the course of about 50 minutes.
About a bit less than 50% of the sun is gone. This is also the point where I started noticing the lighting getting a bit darker outside.
It was only when the sun was about 65% gone that it started to noticeably get a lot darker.
Here is the solar eclipse at its maximum, at 80% gone. It was indeed a lot darker.
It's difficult to describe the brightness outside. It was like the sun was just beginning to set on the horizon, with most of it already below the horizon. Not only that, but the light looked a bit strange. Like the golden hour colors were gone or something. It just wasn't the light you see with sunshine still out.
I tried to take a photo of the surroundings, but it is difficult to capture the lighting conditions exactly as I saw it with my own eyes. This is as close as possible. There is still sunshine, but it's dim and colorless. The blue sky also turned to a gray or milky color.
At the peak of the eclipse, some clouds also came over the sun. Just small, high-level clouds. Got some more shots and used a bit different settings to capture the sun's rays.
This one was taken about 20 minutes later, when the sun started to come out again; I also wanted to keep the sea in the shot.
I didn't really see the brightening of the day because the sun had just started to set.
Anyway, it was an awesome experience. Another one of this magnitude happens in 10 years when the moon covers 80% of the sun. When is the total solar eclipse here in Estonia? Well, shit, I'll already be dead when that happens. It's gonna happen in the year of 2126.
Did you see this solar eclipse too?
