Total Eclipse of the Sun 11 August 1999

Fécamp, Normandy, 11 August 1999

This was my first total eclipse and my first attempt at photographing them.

With a group of friends I went to France, staying in the small Normandy village of Vieux-Pont-en-Auge and travelling to Fécamp north of Le Havre on eclipse day which was near the centre line of totality.

Arriving at the eclipse site we thought we were out of luck as clouds covered the sky. But just 20 minutes before totality the clouds parted and we had an uninterrupted view of the rest of the eclipse.

I learned some valuable lessons from this eclipse. I was not well prepared and had not done much rehearsal of what I was planning to do during the short 2½ minutes of totality. I was also pessimistic about seeing the eclipse because of the cloudy sky, and was taken by surprise when the clouds suddenly cleared. Realizing we were going to see it with just 20 minutes to go, there was a panic to get everything set up and focussed.

The result, as can be seen, is not a great photo. The inner corona and prominences are over-exposed, the focus is slightly off and even the framing leaves something to be desired.

But the significance of this eclipse was more in the context. It was to be the first total eclipse visible from Britain since 1927 and was widely written about in many of the astronomy books I had while growing up, along with the return of Halley’s comet, the line-up of planets in 1982 (which inspired the Grand Tour of the Voyager missions) and the transit of Venus in the far-off future of 2004. So to see it at last was a dream fulfilled.

Photographed with a Questar 3½ and Nikon F70 SLR using Kodachrome 64 slide film.

In the Moon’s shadow cone

View during totality towards the west, from where the Moon’s shadow swept over the small town of Fécamp, about 20 miles up the Normandy coast from Le Havre. This picture gives a fairly good idea of how dark it gets during a total eclipse.

Post-eclipse celebration

Somehow it was more exciting to see an eclipse that had almost dashed our hopes, only to restore them at the last minute. Our group returned to our gite – Le Vieux Pressoir in the village of Vieux-Pont-en-Auge – where we celebrated the clearing of the clouds just 20 minutes before totality.

Brian, Suzanne, Vanessa, myself, Amanda, Ian, Hazel and Peter appear in the photo. The children – Elizabeth, Iain, Siobhan and Jeff – were in bed by this time.