This was the view Sunday evening as the Sun descended into the northwest sky, accompanied by the Moon covering part of its disk.

I shot this near mid-eclipse with a handheld camera and filter dimming what would have otherwise been a vastly overexposed Sun. A liberal use of Photoshop’s Highlight recovery and Shadow details tools compressed the dynamic range even more, to bring out details in the sky and clouds and in the dark filtered image. But this is a single image, not a composite.

As you can see, even at its best the Sun shone through light cloud, which added somewhat to the scenery of the sky and the weird quality of the light at mid-eclipse. But all told, I’d rather do without clouds at any eclipse. They make for anxious moments I could live without.

I took this shot from the TELUS Spark science centre, where we set up sidewalk telescopes for viewing the eclipse, looking over the parking lot and hill to the west of us. It’s where the Sun will also be for the transit.

— Alan, May 21, 2012 / © 2012 Alan Dyer