This afternoon, we had a solar eclipse watch party outside the Parish House. Eight people from First Parish came by, and another seven or eight random passers-by wandered over at different times to see what we were up to.

In addition to looking through our protective glasses, we were also able to project the eclipse. The projected image was large enough that we could see at least one sunspot, which was pretty cool. And the projected image made it easy to take photos of the progress of the eclipse.

We also had a pinhole projector, but the image from that was so small it was a bit disappointing.

Fortunately, the clouds held off. At 3:30, the eclipse reached its maximum magnitude — 0.962. Although it didn’t seem all that dark, we all noticed that the air temperature got cooler.

Here’s an animated GIF showing photos we took of the projected image. You’ll notice that the projection turned the eclipse upside down — if you viewed the eclipse through protective glasses, this is the inverse of what you saw! The amount of time each image is displayed in the animation is proportional to the amount of time that elapsed between each photo. (You may have to click on the GIF to make the animation begin.)