As a scientist and engineer, one of my interests is using photography in a straightforward way to either see what is hard to see or to record what we might not expect to see in the world. This image sort of encapsulates that interest. Here in the Dallas area we are seeing about 80-82% coverage of the sun this morning. That is enough to darken the day noticeably and to impart a fairly strange character to the daylight.

The first image captures the edge of the shadow of our roof on the ground in the back yard. Any other day, the shadow of that edge would be quite (although not perfectly) sharp. Today, because of the diffraction of the sunlight as it passes the edge of the moon, here is the effect of the shadow...much softer than normal.
The last two images just happened to appear on the kitchen floor while I was uploading the first one.

This was interesting. I remember when I was kid on a farm in western Iowa and in the haymow of the barn, there were small holes in the roof, perhaps were nails had been formerly, which admitted light to the darkened interior. This was filled with small particles of hay dust which were not visible if the big doors were opened, but when closed, the sun would penetrate the nail holes and illuminate sun trails across the beams and rafters and large open area above both the baled and loose hay. I wonder both how this would have looked photograph and also how much of that stuff I breathed in. Thanks for your post.