june: eclipse tree

Anyone lucky enough to be in Africa for the first total solar eclipse of this millennium will see many amazing phenomena. One is easy to miss, because you need to look down instead of up...

The shadow of this tree, photographed at Northwestern University during the 1994 eclipse, contains hundreds of tiny crescents. The effect occurs during the deep partial phase of an eclipse, and is caused by the gaps between the leaves acting as pinhole cameras and projecting images of the Sun onto the ground.

Image: Copyright E. Israel.