Hey Doc, It Looks Like the Moon Bone is Connected to the Sun Bone!

What's Wrong With This Picture?

My Park was covered with people in the early evening of Sunday May 20, 2012, they were mostly looking West, into the Sun; there was a rare local astronomical event – a Solar Eclipse.

A piece of X-Ray film was used as a filter to look at the sun as the moon passed between it and earth. Notice the eclipse in the lens flare, in the lower right third of the picture, above, you can see the progress of the moon's path across the sun.

There were many variations on devices used to protect ones eyes. The man with his head in a box was observing the event through a pin-hole camera obscura. I also used a white sheet of paper and with my back to the Sun held my hand in front of it about a foot and a half away and allowed a small opening between and then focused the until I could see the image, though it was upside down.

One of the favored methods was the use of very dense filter, welders goggles, multiple layers of window tinting, multiple polarizing filter, or fully exposed black and white film.

This little girl used he filter as a Sun visor when she wasn't observing the eclipse.

The above family offered me a filter which I used to make the above and below photos of the Sun,

Though looking at the Sun, it's brilliance did not seem to dim at the maximum coverage the proper exposure of subjects was reduced seven stops,