* * * * * Solar eclipse of 31 May 2003 * * * * *

For the third time this month we had the luck to have fairly clear skies during the time of an
eclipse. After a mostly cloudy night, we noticed bigger breaks in the clouddeck to the east around
our planned time of departure to Delfzijl, so we took the gamble and drove off around 2h30 UT.
When we arrived at our preselected site near the harbour, where we had unobstructed views ocross
the Ems/Dollard towards the German coast, the sky still looked very poor. There was cirrus and some
cloud to the east, so we feared that we would miss the better part of the show.
However, to our surprise we noticed a very pale red, partially eclipsed Sun low over the horizon
as early as 3h17 UT, only a couple of minutes after the calculated time of sunrise.
We could follow it comfortably to the time of maximum eclipse around 3h33 UT when it disappeared
in thicker cloud for about 10 minutes. We then followed the eclipse for another 30 minutes. 
Around 4h15 UT we decided to pack up; clouds started to interfere again and the show was largely
over anyhow...
Below you find a selection of our eclipse images.
The images by Reinder (times in yellow) were taken with a 300mm lens (and 1 with 50mm) on Fujicolor 
Superia 100 film, those by Edwin (times in orange) with a 1000mm lens on Agfa HDC 200-2 film and
with an electronic camera at about 200mm effective focal length.
(Reinder J. Bouma/Edwin van Dijk, 2 June 2003)
























































































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