Fighting with computers

It is often said that reality surpasses fiction (I reckon Mark Twain's quote was "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, Truth isn't."). That was definitely the case yesterday, with a total solar eclipse in some areas. As you can guess, I was lucky enough to get a first row seat for the event.  We walk up a mountain to a spot we previously checked and wait for the moon to slowly but surely block the sun's light. It took approximately one hour, and it did not look very different from a sunset; the difference, of course, was that the sun was not setting over the horizon but was just getting dimmer and dimmer. But at 20:30 local time, the sun was fully blocked, and only a few light rays were visible all around the dark moon. That lasted a bit more than one minute of wonder, some of it I wasted fighting with my camera zoom till I got a couple of not-so-good pictures. But the scene looked like a sci-fi movie. Rea...