We tried to view the partial eclipse.

Our optics group blacked out the entire seminar room with bin bags and tried to view the eclipse through a pinhole.

the weather was awful, but they started to get images of the southbank!

this is projected onto a small whiteboard, impressive no?

Shame about the fact London was enrobed in a Dickensian fog so they couldn’t see the eclipse, but look at this image of Somerset House!

And here is an image of the light level in London taken by colleague Patrick Mesquida downstairs who writes “As a consolation here’s the light level of the sky I measured with my digital camera set to manual, so that exposure, ISO, and aperture were constant.”

That’s a big effect (as you would expect!).

UPDATE in the afternoon the sunshine meant that the pinhole camera worked a lot better!

Of course, the image is inverted, so its upside down, this is what it looks like

Strictly speaking, they cheated as they used a hole much bigger than a pinhole and fixed a little lens to correct for that. But anyway, they did it!  pity the eclipse was clouded out!