I have another eclipse question…I viewed it using a colander in my back yard, northern California, so northwest of the eclipse’s path:
Assume north is at the top-right of the photo, and this is at it’s maximum local time, with about 30% shadow. Why does the moon’s shadow appear on the left-hand side of the holes? I would have thought the shadow would be on the right side, given my position.
Annular lunar eclipse? I don’t think those exist.
The holes (and the sun itself) aren’t points and have an aperture.
The light from the sun that hits the right side of the colander’s holes ends up on the left side of the holes’ shadows.
Up/down should also be inverted though that would have been harder to tell this time.
It’s exactly the same effect that you can see with camerae obscurae and there’s more of a description on the wiki:
The same thing happens with light entering our eyes, but our brains are wired to handle the signal processing for us.
Interesting - thank you!!
A lens will invert an image top to bottom and right to left.
Lenses can flip an image, depending on the kind of lens and the distance of the object. They don’t always (for instance, the image from a magnifying glass is upright).
Pinholes, however, always flip an image.
Brain freeze. I meant hybrid solar eclipse. In those, the tip of the moon’s conical shadow penetrates the daytime surface of the earth at some point during the eclipse.
Ok, a magnifying glass will invert the image if you hold it far enough away from your eyes. Is this impossible with a pinhole camera because of an extremely short distance to the focal point? Is that distance 0?
Which is why we need cosmic condoms.
A pinhole doesn’t have a focal length, and will produce a clear image at any distance from an object at any distance. Though you could also describe it as having any focal length you want, but an infinite depth of field.