Derby and District Astronomical Society

Solar Eclipse
Wednesday 12th August 2026

Long evening shadows fall across the parched grass at the Flamsteed Observatory as members gather for the eclipse.  Credit: Mike Lancaster.

Chris Booth took the attached sequence of pictures on his Seestar S50. This was created by stacking 15 second videos and then stitching them together on an iPad with slight adjustments for background and brightness.  Credit: Chris Booth.

Mike Lancaster photographed the partial eclipse from the Flamsteed Observatory using a Canon EOS 50D camera, 400mm Tamron lens, and a Helios Glass Seymour Solar filter. All frames were shot at f/16 and ISO 100, and most at 1/25th second, with 1/10th second for the later stages of the eclipse. Here is a selection of those images, all cropped from the originals.  Credit: Mike Lancaster.

Sunlight passing through the leaves of nearby trees casts multiple crescent shapes on the side of the Flamsteed Observatory during the partial eclipse.  Credit: Anthony Southwell.

By crossing the hands with the fingers almost closed one can create an impromptu pinhole camera, and view the resulting crescent suns, as demonstrated here by Mike Lancaster.  Picture Credit: Anthony Southwell.

Chris Callaway created the following montage of the UK partial eclipse. The 17 individual images were shot using a Canon R6 Mk2 camera, Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens set at 70mm, a Seymour solar filter and Manfrotto tripod. The success of the image was down to the planning in the days and hours prior to the eclipse. Chris chose a 5 minute interval between frames and worked out what field of view was required to cover the eclipse from beginning to end. The exposure setting used was f4.5, ISO 800 and 1/400th sec shutter speed, with 1/80th sec for the final 4 sun images in the montage. Chris also took an image when the sun was out of the field of view with the Seymour filter removed to use as a background. For that background image he used a 1/2000th second exposure. The images were combined and processed in Photoshop to produce the montage.  Credit: Chris Callaway.

Rob Seymour took the following three images of the eclipse. All were taken afocally using a 100mm / 800mm APM refractor with 2x Televue Powermate and a Canon R6ii camera.  Credit: Rob Seymour.

Peter Branson set up his SkyWatcher Star Traveller telescope with a 90 degree prism attachment to project the image of the sun onto a piece of white card propped up on a seat in a shady part of the garden.  Credit: Peter Branson.

John Hill also produced this chart of the temperature and light flux during the eclipse using his home weather station. He did a similar graph for the March 2015 prartial eclipse (88%), seeing a 2-3°C temperature drop on that occasion. He presumes that hr didn't see much of a drop for the August 2026 eclipse because it was so hot the weather station didn't have time to cool down.  Credit: John Hill.

Jim Sarsgard captured these photos of totality from Zaragoza in Spain. Venus is visible at upper left in the lower photo. Jim used a Google Pixel 10A phone with the Solar Snap app.  Credit: Jim Sarsgard.

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