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wasoxygen  ·  3530 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I chased the solar eclipse, got these pics

    with 93% coverage it seems like it should be only 7% bright, but it felt more like 50%

Don't forget that hours pass between the first contact of the lunar disk with the edge of the sun and the arrival of maximum eclipse. That is plenty of time for eyes to adjust, and eyes are incredibly adaptive. A normal sunlit day is ten times brighter than an overcast day, and maximum direct sunlight is ten times brighter than that. And even an overcast day is ten times brighter than a well-lit office space.

Imgur scrubs the EXIF data from your photos, so I can't check, but if you have very similar photos from times close to and far from totality, you might be able to get some information about the brightness level from the exposure settings.

I am perplexed as to why flagamuffin got a no-show. The sun does not appear at all crescent-shaped in his photo. The timestamp is "2015-03-20 09:39:39," ruining my theory that he had one too many and slept through the eclipse.