I didn’t know there was an eclipse. I found it by unusual crowds of people around me on the beach with tripods, filters, drones, a great deal of expensive glass pointed at the same place.
Because you cannot see it. Eighty-two percent of the Sun was gone and the light was an ordinary Baltic sunset. An eclipse doesn’t dim the Sun, it only makes it smaller.
So I did it properly wrong. An unfiltered iPhone, and ( luckily ) I took that day a Nikon EM with a Tair 11A and a sunglasses too that served as additional ‘hand mounted’ filter in front of the lens. Improvisation.
I think, however, those two frames are more honest than the ones showing eclipse in high resolution. On the digital photograph the Sun is a white blob with no eclipse in it at all and exactly this is how it looks like, the crescent is only at the bottom, as lens side defect, lying on the dark sand, in the lens flare.
The good photographs show you an eclipse. Mine show you the evening reality.
Analog photo:ISO 100 film, Tair 11A, f22 + sunglasses
iPhone photo, note the small eclipse flare.
AI reconstructed eclipse from the flare:
Data and analysis:
| DateTimeOriginal | 2026-08-12 20:05:24.411, offset +02:00 |
| GPS | 54°48′32.61″N, 17°49′21.23″E, altitude 14.48 m |
| GPSImgDirection | 291.25° true |
| Camera | iPhone 14 Pro, 9 mm f/2.8 (the 3× tele), 1/657 s, ISO 32, spot metering |
| Image | 3024 × 4032 |
| Sun | altitude 2.310°, azimuth 292.99° |
| Moon | altitude 2.229°, azimuth 292.96° |
| Angular radii | Sun 15.784′, Moon 16.286′ |
| Separation of centres | 5.250′ |
| Eclipse magnitude | 0.8496 |
| Obscured area | 81.7% |
| Local maximum | 20:03.2 CEST — the frame is 2.2 min after it |
| Crescent arc span | 172° (cusp half-angle 86.0°) |
| Crescent thickness | 4.749′ = 0.1504 of the solar diameter |
| Position angle of the Moon from the Sun | 202.92° from the zenith, clockwise |
AI measured info:
| MEASURED FROM PIXELS | VALUES |
|---|---|
| Saturated solar core | 256 × 286 px, centroid (1325.7, 1067.6) |
| Sea horizon | row 1553 |
| Horizon dip for 14.48 m eye height | 0.112° |
| Plate scale, from 2.310° + 0.112° over 485.4 px | 0.004989 °/px |
| True solar diameter at that scale | 105.5 px |
| Flare, fitted outer limb | centre (1530.7, 2879.4), R = 51.72 px |
| FLARE properties | predicted ephemerides | measured |
|---|---|---|
| Flare diameter | 105.5 px (= the Sun’s true diameter, if magnification is 1) | 103.4 px → 0.981× |
| Crescent tilt in the flare | 22.92° from vertical | 15.3° (15.9° after horizon-tilt correction) |
| Crescent thickness | 15.9 px (0.150 of diameter) | 17.6 px FWHM (0.171) |
| Flare quadrant | opposite the Sun through the frame centre | (1531, 2879) vs (1698, 2964) predicted |
| Analog PHOTO | VALUES |
|---|---|
| Crescent tilt measured on the Tair frame | 49° ± 5 (three estimators: 44°, 51°, 53°) |
| Predicted tilt at 20:09.3 / 20:11.0 | 44.4° / 51.3° |
| Implied time | 20:10 ± 1 min CEST |