These are images of the May 10, 1994 annular solar eclipse. These were scanned in off of photographs taken by Michael Aramini from a rest stop on I-89 near Sharon, VT (43° 43´.7 N, 72° 25´.3 W). This site is fairly close to the centerline of the eclipse.

The photographs were taken using a Minolta X-700 camera body with a Tokina zoom lens (set at its maximum focal length of 200 mm) and a Sigma 2× teleconverter, for an effective focal length of 400 mm. The lens was set for an aperture of f/5.6, which is an effective aperture of f/11.2 due to the 2× teleconverter. The exposure times vary per image, but were all in the ¹/125 sec. to ¹/15 sec. range. The film used was Kodak Ektar 100 speed color negative film. Most of the photos were taken using a Solar Skreen aluminized mylar filter. The last three photos, however, were taken using #14 welder's glass as a filter.

The photos were scanned using an HP ScanJet IIc color scanner and HP DeskScan/UX software (part of HP MPower) running on an HP 9000 series 700 workstation.

Since the filters used result in unnaturally colored images of the sun (blue or green, depending on the filter), I have scanned in the photos as gray scale images.

Images of particular interested are:

• First contact: 115623s.jpeg
• Second contact: 133611s.jpeg
• Center of eclipse: 133818s.jpeg
• Third contact: 134152s.jpeg

You can copy the entire sequence of TIFF files (2.8 MB, .tar archive). Once you decompress this, the filenames in this directory fit one of several forms:

• hhmmsss.tif are gray scale images of photos taken using Solar Skreen. They are at 600 dpi resolution and are scanned off of 4x6 inch color prints.
• hhmmssw.tif are gray scale images of photos taken using welder's glass. They are at 600 dpi resolution and are scanned off of 3.5x5 inch color prints.

The hhmmss in the pathnames is the time of day in Eastern Daylight Time that the photo was taken. hh is in 24 hour notation, i.e. 11 is 11 A.M., 12 is noon, 13 is 1 P.M., and 14 is 2 P.M. These times are based on the time of day on the camera's multifunction back which may have been set incorrectly by a couple of minutes.

The file eclipse.tif is a multipage TIFF file containing the images from each of the *s.tif files in chronological order. In order to properly view this file you must use a TIFF file viewer which supports multipage TIFF files, such the imageview command on HP-UX systems. When viewed with imageview, you can scroll through the pages to manually see an animation of the eclipse.

Analysis of these images yielded the data used to prepare the following plot:

If you would like any additional information about these images, contact Michael Aramini (e-mail: M.Aramini@Verizon.net).