Annular Solar Eclipse 2005 in Spain

In 2005, I was lucky that I could go to the ADASS conference in Spain for work.  The location of the conference was San Lorenzo de El Escorial.  Together with a colleague, I made a round-trip through Spain the days before the conference.  We visited among others Ávila, Segovia, Salamanca and Toledo.  We also met a group of Murzim vzw, the astronomical association from Aalst, Belgium.  The first day of the conference started with observing the annular solar eclipse. 

The weather was very good!  We didn't see a cloud for the whole day!  I took my Vixen 20x80 binoculars with mylar solar filters.  I made some pictures by pushing a Canon PowerShot A60 close to the eyepiece of the binoculars.  This method resulted in nice pictures.

There were 200 participants to the conference, so the observing field, a soccer field with a nice view on the El Escorial castle, was crowded.  Most of the participants of the conference only used eclipse glasses, so a lot of people stopped by to see the eclipse through the binoculars.

The binoculars also attracted the journalists from ESA-tv.  I was happy that the interview they made was in English and not in Spanish.  Right before the annular phase, we could see beautiful sickels under the trees.  These were much more spectacular compared to a total solar eclipse.  Also the shadows (of people) were very peculiar.

De annular phase took a bit more than 4 minutes, but the real spectacle of a total solar eclipse could not be seen...  It didn't become dark, the the amazing corona could (of course) not be seen.  It was very nice to witness an annular solar eclipse once, but personally, I don't think I would really travel far to see another one. 

When the annular phases ended, all participants of the conference went inside for the real start of the conference.  We stayed till the end of the partial phase, all alone on the big soccer field.