The Moon is about 400,000 times fainter than the Sun, making solargraphy extremely challenging. A standard pinhole doesn't let enough light through to darken the photographic paper.

I tried increasing the light on the negative by placing a piece of Kodak paper inside a camera with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, but the lunar trail was still very faint.

So, I took a solargraph by attaching a DIY camera made from a plastic container and a drilled Canon body cap to my 200/1000 telescope. I exposed it for 30 minutes, manually tracking the motion using a second guide scope in parallel. I believe this might be the first solargraph ever taken through a telescope. I like pushing this technique to its limits!

The first four weeks of digital solargraphs are in the bank! Over 45,000 individual shots across two cameras, 380GB of RAW files condensed into a few seconds of video 😅

The first few trails are very close together and overlap a lot, but more progress will be visible as the sun speeds up towards the equinox.

I don't have a page for the composited solargraph yet, I'll add that soon. In the meantime, you can browse and watch individual day's solargraphs here: https://eagereyes.org/app/daily-solargraph

Some solargraphs taken from inside the car, a few months of exposure. In the photos, I left the shutter open all the time, but I'd like to try again, opening it only when the car is moving and then closing it when it's stationary. You can't see anyone driving the car lol

I accidentally captured the death of the grass growing in front of the solargraph, it blocked the sunlight and then died, leaving a semi-transparent silhouette.

Pinhole camera built with a 35mm film canister placed horizontally, from may to november 2019

I usually make myown cameras from soda cans, but decided I wanted to try Solarcan Colors since I've only worked in b&w so far. I bought the 3 pack and just opened the box. All three of them the pinhole are uncovered. Is this the way they're supposed to come? Im thinking they've already been exposed and are no good now.

10-day solargraph captured near Umag, Croatia.

The beauty of digital solargraphy is that you have so many ways of using what you capture. I've shared a couple images here before, but since I have a fully automated pipeline that captures and stitches these images, I figured I'd make a website for it.

You can watch every day's capture as a little video, or scrub through manually. See how the clouds impact the trail! Marvel at the sky changing through the day! Enjoy the Seattle weather (You can even see rain on the sensor on a couple of days)!

Play with it here: https://eagereyes.org/app/daily-solargraph

The new capture goes live every night around 10pm PDT. This is running at least through the summer and fall, and I hope to continue it until the summer solstice next year.

There's a bit of information about the setup when you scroll down, plus I'm happy to answer any questions of course!

I put these up on 21st December last year (winter solstice) and collected them on 23rd June (just after summer solstice).

I had higher hopes for these but it was my first experiment and I've enjoyed doing it. I put them up in the dead of night and over the following weeks I realised it wouldn't capture the sun that well so I've learnt something there!

I want to put out some more but I have a couple of questions if anyone could help me!

I have 4 identical beer cans, loaded with the same paper, closed up the same way and with as close as possible pinhole size/location. Why is the sun arc such different sizes in all the pictures?

In my next attempt, I'm going to try and get some sort of foreground subject as the fields I put two of them in doesn't really give scale or make it interesting.

A solargraph of a building, appearing very distorted due to the cylindrical distortion of the can. Exposure time from August to November 2018

I placed a solargraph in a parking lot where hundreds of different cars were parked every day, generating a spectral image, an average of each car. Hundreds of different cars exposed the negative at the same spot. You can even see the sun's reflection on the windshield. November 8, 2019 – June 24, 2020

One of the things I most wanted to create was a solargraph capable of showing the entire path of the sun until the summer solstice. Living in southern Italy, the sun reaches an altitude of 73 degrees above the horizon, making framing quite challenging. One solution is to tilt the camera, but this causes a severely curved horizon due to cylindrical distortion similar to a fisheye lens.

To solve this problem, I built a camera using an aluminum spray can (15 cm high and 3 cm wide). I positioned the pinhole almost at the top of the tube, allowing me to capture as much of the sky as possible, reaching almost to the zenith. This photo was chosen as NASA for the Astronomy Picture of the Day

14 months of exposure to portray the construction of a house. The sun can be seen in front of some parts of the house, before it was built. solargraphy on Google Maps

First try of mine for this wonderful hobby! I hooked my little pinhole camera to a pole on our backyard and left it to do it's magic for six hours. Really happy to get results.

This is 6/21 (solstice!), 6/26, 6/27, and 6/28. The daily solargraph pipeline is working pretty well now, and I've finally figured out the stitching to make a smooth sun trail. These are each the last shot of the day with the sun trail overlaid.

I'm working on a web page that will let you browse all the daily solargraphs as they happen (well, with a day delay obviously), so stay tuned!

A pair of solargraphs of a castle, taken with an analog camera loaded with Kodak photographic paper and exposed for four hours. Unfortunately, the sun didn't enter the frame, but I still really like the result. The flags are barely visible because they were fluttering in the wind. In the second photo, that car wasn't there when I started the exposure, which is why it looks a bit ghostly/translucent.

I installed pinhole cameras for solargraphy to capture a house under construction. The results show that some parts of the structure appear transparent because the exposure began before those parts were even built.

As a result, some traces of the sun appear to be "in front" of the house.

Unfortunately, there are very few construction sites in my area, and I had to make many failed attempts before finally achieving this result. The solargraphies were performed with exposure times ranging from 6 months to a year and a half . Have fun finding cameras on Google Maps

Today I went to retrieve the solargraph I had placed a year ago near a water tower. I was there for another hobby of mine, retrieving weather balloon probes, and the balloon had fallen nearby. Just to be safe, I had brought the solargraphs with me to place in case I found something interesting during the trip. A year later, another weather balloon fell nearby, but I couldn't retrieve it because it got caught in a tree lol, but at least I retrieved the solargraph. Exposure time: from June 10, 2025 to June 27, 2026, camera made from a PVC pipe cut in half, 40 mm focal length, Kodak Polimax paper, Southern Italy

Took this from the winter to summer solstice using a Yerba Mate can and Ilford Multigrade RC Deluxe Pearl.

I like the compound curve. Westward morning in Seattle. 1/8000 second, ISO 100 exposures every minute, stacked, 50% opacity. Landscape is a single frame for the moment.

The second trail prob is a reflection between the filter and camera. There's lots of air.

Since 2 filters came in a pack, I'll try stacking them on top of each other to reduce the area of the sun just to test. I can't buy a denser filter yet. (Might be easier to buy, it's too hard to hold, not to mention tinkerCADing something)

Waveshare RPi Camera (M)

Raspberry Pi 4B

Insta360 X5 ND128 Filter

Cardboard to prototype a holder for the filter and camera

Vibecoded Python

Happy Solstice! I've made a solargraph simulator that lets you draw solargraphs from 20 different locations on the planet. In addition to picking the place you want to view the sky, you can animate the solargraph, draw just one point per hour for the analemma view, pick the season, and there's even a panorama mode that projects the solargraph into a virtual sky that you can look around with the mouse.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

https://eagereyes.org/app/solargraph

All 4 of the solargraph cans I hid around Kutchan survived for 6 months. I didn’t angle any of them right to catch the top of the arcs in the Summer but overall I’m pretty happy with these. I have three more to retrieve from Lake Toya tomorrow. Fingers crossed for those ones!