How Do Colors Change During an Eclipse?

How does a solar eclipse change your surroundings? More than you might think!

A comparison of the same tree, taken at different times during the eclipse on April 8th. On the left, the image was taken around 15 minutes before totality. On the right, the image was taken just mere minutes before. Credit: Rebecca Jean T.

During my experience at the recent total solar eclipse, I captured these images as the Moon slowly overtook the Sun. As you can see, things look quite a bit different! On the left, is an image of a tree taken 15 minutes or so before totality. On the right, just 2 minutes before totality. Colors are notably different and duller. Everything almost seemed to have a yellow hue to it, as if there was a filter placed over everything.

What I found interesting was how it’s not quite the same color change as sunset because we are not losing sunlight in just one direction but in nearly all directions. During totality, there is a 360-degree sunset around the horizon for the same reason.

Images of sheets of red and green construction paper taken during the total solar eclipse. The left image was taken before the partial phases began that morning in full sunlight. The image on the right was taken around 10 minutes before totality. Credit: Rebecca Jean T.

Another interesting thing to witness was seeing how colors like red and green started to change as much as 10–15 minutes before totality, while our surroundings appeared mostly the same until the last 5 minutes before. In the above image you can see how red and green looked before the partial phases even started on the left, and around 10 minutes before…