ENVIRONMENTAL MEASUREMENTS

The images of the Total Solar Eclipse of 29 March 2006,
by Lorenzo Comolli and Alessandro Gambaro


A solar eclipse greatly influences the Earth atmospere. The temperature, relative humidity, luminance and pressure data show typical trends, peculiar to each eclipse and location.
With a digital thermo-hygrometer we measured a 3°C fall of the temperature (4°C respect to the trend), definitely less than the 7°C of the total solar eclipse of 1999 in Hungary, but more than the last anular eclipse of 2005 in Spain where the fall was only of 0.5°C.
A digital luxmeter measured the horizontal luminance: this is a really interesting measurement, that show the tremendous fall of the light, between full Sun (more than 113000 lux) and totality (only 4.1 lux). The luminance was reduced only to
0.0036%, or 1/28000.


The temperature trend show a maximum abour 25 minutes after the T1, and a minumum after 15 min from totality, as predicted considering the inertia of the atmosphere. We measured a 3°C fall of the temperature (4°C respect to the trend), definitely less than the 7°C of the total solar eclipse of 1999 in Hungary, but more than the last anular eclipse of 2005 in Spain where the fall was only of 0.5°C.


The relative humidity data show an inverse trend respect to temperature (a lowering in temperature imply an increase in the relative humidity). From the 43% minima obtained before totality, the RH rised to 58% about 15 min after totality.


During this eclipse we were able to measure the environmental light with a digital luxmeter. The luxmeter was placed horizontally at about 1m from the ground to avoid that the near people and telescope affect the measurements. The acquired data show the enormous fall between full Sun (more than 113000 lux) and totality (only 4.1 lux). The luminance was reduced only to 0.0036%, or 1/28000. Also during totality a trend is visible, with the minimum reached at the maximum phase, indicating that also the internal corona gave a contribution to the measurements.


The pressure was nearly constant, at about 992 mbar. The measurements were done with a watch, with a resolution of 1 mbar.



HTML Editing and Publishing by Lorenzo Comolli. Email me at comolli@libero.it.
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