Solar Eclipse

At my place solar eclipse of January 15, 2010 was visible only as partial solar eclipse. I used Canon EOS 5D mark II along with Canon EF 300mm f/4.0 L IS USM lens with stacked 2 1.4x tele-converters. I added 2 neutral density filters (2 Stop + 4 Stop) along with a circular polarizer filter. Even with that the intensity of sun was too much. I shot all shots at ISO 100, 1/8000 sec at F/45. I covered the front of lens using a welding glass plate during focusing and aligning with sun thus avoiding direct eye contact. Focus was manual focus using the marking on the lens. Image Stabilization was off as camera was on a tripod. I initially tried to shoot using welding glass only as the protector, but result was disappointing as the glass plate was giving lot of internal reflections. Throughout the eclipse I was wearing protective Mylar film coated glasses to protect my eyes. I did not use live view or auto focus so as to save my sensor getting burnt down by solar rays.

The solar eclipse of January 15, 2010 was an annular eclipse of the Sun with a magnitude of 0.9190. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partially obscuring Earth’s view of the Sun. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon’s apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun, causing the sun to look like an annulus (ring), blocking most of the Sun’s light. An annular eclipse will appear as partial eclipse over a region thousands of kilometres wide.

This was the longest annular solar eclipse of the millennium,[1] and the longest until December 23, 2043, with a maximum length of 11 mins and 7.8 seconds. (The solar eclipse of January 4, 1992 was longer, at 11 minutes, 41 seconds, occurring in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.)

It was visible as a partial eclipse in much of Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. It was seen as annular within a narrow stretch of 300 km (190 mi) width across Central Africa, Maldives, South Kerala (India), South Tamil Nadu (India), North Sri Lanka, parts of Burma and parts of China.