I was fortunate to get to be a speaker on the Discovery Princess on an eclipse cruise to the Mexican Riviera. I’m posting some photos here not only as a quick-and-dirty observing report, but also to make them available to my fellow travelers. Folks: download, post, and print at will!
During the eclipse on April 8 I did some pinhole projection.
I used a paper template that showed the west coast of Mexico, including our ports of call: Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, Manzanillo, and Puerto Vallarta.
Possibly my favorite effect during a total solar eclipse is the 360 sunset. Here’s my view looking forward on the starboard side, just after the start of totality.
After totality, I enjoyed on of the ‘Eclipse’ drinks that the bars on board were serving.
Photos of my piece of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite — the one I was carrying around the ship and inviting people to hold for themselves — are in this post (link). And the meteorite now has its own profiles on Facebook (link) and Instagram (link). Come say hi!
Photos of many of the other meteorites and impactites from my “Space Rocks: Meteorites and Tektites” talk are available in previous blog posts, under the ‘My Meteorites’ category (link). Here are a few that aren’t:
Here’s my personal collection of indochinite tektites, showing a range of different shapes.
The same photo without labels.
Other tektites and impactites from my collection.
And that photo without labels.
My cast of a little australite “button” tektite. Like many of the objects in my collection, both the tektite cast and the 1cm cube came from meteorite vendor Gary Fujihara, “Big Kahuna” on eBay (username fujmon). I’ve bought a lot of stuff from Gary over the years, and I’ve had only great experiences.
To my fellow travelers: many thanks for making my cruise so enjoyable! I hope to see you again in the future.
An index card cutout showing our route from SoCal to the centerline of the eclipse path.
I’d been so focused on next year’s total solar eclipse that spring was halfway over before I realized that there was going to an annular eclipse this fall. Not only that, but the path of annularity would slash right through central Utah, where I usually go to hunt for dinosaurs. But by the time I wised up, all of the hotels in Utah were either booked up or charging ruinous prices. I looked farther east, and found affordable lodging in Gallup, New Mexico. So that became the base camp for my family’s eclipse expedition.
Solar halo and sun dogs, from Kingman, Arizona, on Friday, Oct. 13, 2023.
We drove to Gallup on Friday, October 13. It was a long drive, but a beautiful one. We stopped for gas in Kingman, Arizona, and some high, thin cirrus clouds produced the best solar halo and sun dogs that I’ve ever seen. The forecast for October 14 in northwestern New Mexico was originally partly cloudy, but by the evening before the forecast has cleared out.
The observing field at Little Water, New Mexico. The SUV in the center with the open hatch is mine.
The day dawned clear and cold – at least, cold by Southern California standards. We headed north on US 491, to a point about halfway between Newcomb and Shiprock. I’d originally planned to meet up with fellow PVAA member Frank Nelson, who had a spot picked out bang on the centerline. Just a few miles short of that spot we came across Little Water, New Mexico, which seemed to consist entirely of one gas station and a house some way in the distance. The gas station had a convenience store and restrooms, it was only about six miles from the centerline of the eclipse, and a gaggle of other eclipse chasers was already setting up there to observe. We decided to stay there in Little Water and take advantage of having snacks, drinks, and a restroom close to hand.
My usual solar observing rig: SkyScanner 100, homemade Sun Funnel, and dollar-store mustard bottle sun-finder. When the dot of sun shining through the cap of the mustard bottle is centered on the bottom of the bottle, the scope is pointed at the sun!
For observing the eclipse we had eclipses glasses and a small telescope with a Sun Funnel. I’d built my first Sun Funnel back in 2012 for the annular eclipse that cut across the desert southwest that May. After 10 years, a total eclipse, and transits of Venus and Mercury, that original Sun Funnel was old, dusty, and falling apart. I discarded it when I moved households this spring. Fortunately they’re easy and inexpensive to build, and I got the new one together and tested in the back yard a couple of days before go time.
The Adams-Wedel party at annularity: Aidan, Jenny, London, and me.
We shared the observing field with about twenty other amateur astronomers, who had come from Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado – the most distant being from Crestline, California, and Denver. Other observers at the site had filtered binoculars, hydrogen-alpha refractors, and a computerized 10-inch Newtonian with an eyepiece camera sending live images to a laptop. We all shared views through our setups.
Baily’s Beads at third contact. I got better views of them this time than I ever have before.
My little reflector and Sun Funnel were pretty popular, especially for observing Baily’s Beads – detached points of light formed by sunlight streaming through valleys on the limb of the moon – at the start and end of annularity. The skies were clear and the cool air made for pleasant viewing, since we were all sitting or standing in the sun for the better part of two hours. We did notice that it got distinctly cooler for a few minutes on either side of annularity, which is an effect I’d only experienced before with a total eclipse. We also took time to enjoy our weird shadows during annularity:
All too soon the show was over and it was time to get back on the road. We drove northeast to Monument Valley, and spent Saturday evening in Flagstaff, before coming home on Sunday. All in all it was a great trip, and it’s already got me looking forward to future eclipses.
Our head editor at Sky & Telescope asked all of us who write for the magazine to submit observing reports from the eclipse. Mine got included, with one of the photos I sent in — it’s about 3/4 of the way down the page here.
Man, only the second post in six months, and we’re back to another eclipse! Oh well, that’s how it goes sometimes.
This is also going to a short post. I have more photos from the eclipse, and I’m hoping to get them processed soon and put into a composite like I did for the October, 2014 (link), and April, 2015 (link), lunar eclipses. But those photos are still lurking in a raw state on my hard drive. You’re getting the only two I’ve processed so far: the above shot of the full moon at 12:20 AM, before the eclipse started, taken with a Nikon Coolpix 4500, and the below shot from the start of max eclipse, around 5:00 AM, taken with an iPhone 7. Both shots taken afocally through London’s XT4.5 dob and a 32mm Plossl.
Hope you got to see it. Stand by for more shots…at some point. Hopefully. What can I say? Fossil season came early this year…as I knew it eventually would.
My parents, Norma and John (seated), and me with London and Vicki (standing), with the projected eclipse.
Long Range Planning
Since the August, 2017, eclipse first came on my radar, my plan was to see it from somewhere on the Great Plains. I had two reasons for this. One, most of my family lives in Oklahoma, and it would be simpler for them to drive up to the eclipse path than to fly to somewhere more remote. Also, on the plains you can usually see weather coming from a long way out, and fronts move in predictable ways. I figured that if clouds did spring up on eclipse day, I’d have a better chance of driving to get around them on the plains than anywhere else.
Originally I’d been thinking Kansas or Missouri, both of which border Oklahoma and would have made short drives for my relatives. But a closer look at the eclipse map this spring dissuaded me. The eclipse would only barely clip the northeastern corner of Kansas, in the relatively densely populated area around Kansas City. The path of totality painted a broad stripe across Missouri, but mostly along a line connecting Kansas City and St. Louis. I figured that area would get hammered by visitors, and the cloud forecast wasn’t as favorable as it was for points west, either.
Map by Xavier Jubier/Eclipse2017.org
Nebraska, on the other hand, looked pretty good. My maternal grandparents used to live in Imperial, in the southwest corner, and they retired just a few miles down the road to Enders. Imperial would make a convenient rendezvous point, both for any family driving up from Oklahoma, and for me, Vicki, and London flying in from California.
In one sense Imperial was not convenient: it’s a long way from any major airport. Two hundred miles from Denver, and three hundred from Lincoln. But I like long drives in the country (really, I do!), and I was happy to trade some driving at either end of the trip if it would save me traffic in the middle.
I guess now is a good time to mention that I did not want to stay on the path of totality. I figured – correctly, as it turned out – that competition for rooms would be fierce, that at least some places would be gouging visitors, and that traffic would be a problem in at least some areas. Instead, I wanted to stay an hour or two off the path of totality, preferably somewhere out of the way, where crowds would not be a problem, but I’d still have a range of possible observing spots within easy driving range. Again, Imperial was a promising choice, and in early February, I called and reserved rooms for my parents and for Vicki, London, and me at the Balcony House Bed & Breakfast (which was outstanding, by the way – it’s worth going to southwestern Nebraska just to stay there).
By now, plans were firming up. I knew that the fall gross anatomy course at WesternU would be rolling by eclipse time, and Vicki and I would need to arrange things so we’d miss as few days of lab as possible (many thanks to our department chair for the time off!). But we also wanted some time in Imperial to unwind, and to visit places important to our family history. That meant leaving on Saturday, August 19, and coming back on Tuesday, August 22. The Balcony House didn’t have any rooms on Saturday night, and in fact, nobody else in Imperial did, either. So we decided to make Saturday an easy day and only drive as far as Holyoke, Colorado. Holyoke is another old family stomping ground – Grandpa and Grandma had lived there for several years, too, and it’s where my mom grew up.
Sun funnel testing in Claremont
The Sun Funnel Rides Again
Gear! I didn’t settle on exactly what I’d be rolling with until Thursday, August 17, just two days before we were to fly. My old Sun Funnel – veteran of the annular eclipse and Venus transit of 2012 and the partial eclipse of 2014 – was in storage in the garage. There was never really any question but what it would be going along; it’s just too darned useful for showing solar events to even small groups of people. I did have to decide which scope to use with it. We’d sold London’s AstroScan, but my flock of airline-portable scopes had grown in the meantime. Strong contenders included the GalileoScope, Tasco-Vixen 9VR, and SkyScanner 100. I set up and tested the 9VR and the SkyScanner, and I ended up going with the latter scope, for several reasons:
It has the most aperture of any scope I was seriously considering.
It’s at least somewhat collimatable.
With its open design, I wasn’t worried about it overheating.
It balanced the best with the Sun Funnel mounted.
For the flights, I put the SkyScanner in the padded bag that my Apex 127 came in, and packed t-shirts and socks around it. The Sun Funnel I broke down – I put the screen material in a folder between sheets of clean paper, and I stuffed more socks in the funnel itself. I also brought along four pairs of eclipse glasses, a piece of #14 welder’s glass (previously seen here), and 10×42 Bushnell binoculars to look for solar prominences during totality.
London with his grandparents in front of the Balcony House in Imperial, Nebraska
One more piece of gear came to me on the road. Sunday morning we woke up in Holyoke, Colorado, had lunch at The Skillet (which had excellent country cooking), and then popped across the street to the Family Dollar for a few odds and ends. I’d been thinking of making a little sun-finder, like the one David DeLano detailed in this post. My SkyScanner has a DIY wooden bracket that is square to the tube, so I just needed something round that I could use to project a spot of sunlight. I ended up going with a $1 empty condiment bottle, which I already blogged about here. When we rolled into Imperial that afternoon, I unpacked all of the gear and did a test run on the sidewalk in front of the Balcony House. Everything was ready – now we just needed clear skies.
Targeting on the Fly
My initial targets for possible eclipse observing spots were the towns of Tryon and Stapleton, Nebraska, both about a half an hour north of North Platte. I picked up a Nebraska road map and highlighted possible routes from Imperial to either Tryon or Stapleton, going either north to the path of totality and then east, or vice versa. Either town would have required about 2.5 hours of driving on a regular day, and I figured it would be smart to budget for eclipse traffic. The east-then-north route to Stapleton had the following problem: it went through North Platte, and if traffic was apocalyptically bad, we might get stuck on the edge of the path of totality, or even outside of it. The north-then-east route to Tryon would get us close to the centerline first, with fewer opportunities to get stuck off the path.
Ah, but then. A few days out, and the weather apps were predicting partial clouds and possibly even rainfall for west-central Nebraska. Right up until Monday morning, North Platte, Tryon, and Stapleton all looked they might get clouded out. So Sunday the five of us – Mom, Dad, Vicki, London, and me – had a council of war. To the level of detail possible in weather prediction, the area around North Platte looked lousy, but Scottsbluff, in far western Nebraska, was supposed to have sunny skies. Between North Platte and Scottsbluff, the weather looked progressively better to the west, and worse to the east. So we changed things up: instead of turning east to Tryon or Stapleton, we’d stay on Highway 61 north out of Ogallala and shoot up to Hyannis, then turn west on Highway 2 and go as far as we needed to find clear skies. This was basically the Tryon plan with the directions reversed: go straight north to the eclipse path first, then drive east or west along the path to a promising destination.
The Drive Up
I wish I had had the time and opportunity to take pictures during the drive up from Imperial. It was beautiful. We left Imperial right after dawn, and the rising sun turned the fields to gold. Within a few miles, we could see banks of fog lying in the low spots on the landscape. And then a few miles further, the fog was lying everywhere. We started driving through fogbanks that congealed into an unbroken blanket by the time we reached Ogallala. The weather apps were still projecting clear skies to the west and, well, unclear skies to the east, so we kept going.
The fog had cleared by the time we saw our first eclipse-watchers, at the fairgrounds in Arthur. There were hundreds of people in RVs, tents, cars, and trucks, looking worriedly up at a sky that was completely socked in with clouds. We kept going, and saw a few hundred more scattered along the side of the road as we approached the center line. About this point we hit what I can barely bring myself to describe as ‘traffic’. At its worst, we were the 9th and 10th vehicles in a convoy of 13, but the convoy was rolling along at a steady 62 or 63 miles per hour, which was fine and certainly not worth the risk of trying to pass someone on a two-lane road in the Nebraska sandhills. The hills themselves were liberally spangled with wild sunflowers. From a distance, they looked like they’d been dusted with pollen. Everywhere we went the landscape was green.
Alliance
From a purely eclipse-viewing perspective, I would have been happy with any of the towns on Highway 2 west of Hyannis. Sure, they were a few miles off of centerline, but the difference in the duration of totality would have been trivial. And I figured we’d miss the big crowds expected at Alliance. But this plan had one fatal flaw, which I did not anticipate: a complete absence of public restrooms west of Hyannis. If I’d been by myself, I might have just pulled over anywhere and, er, recharged the water table as needed, but that’s a less attractive option to a group that includes two women and two senior citizens. Actually, there may have been a public restroom in Lakeside, but we had no chance to find out, as there was a big train blocking the road into town when we came by. So we headed on into Alliance and braced for the worst.
Our setup at the Western Nebraska Community College shindig. The forest of telephone poles in the background is where line repair people train.
The worst turned out to be not that bad, actually. We drove past a big group assembled on a grassy field on the east edge of town, and on to the first gas station that looked like it might have restrooms. By the time we’d all had a biology break, it was almost time for the eclipse to start. We decided to head back out to the east edge of town and see if the group on the grass still had some parking spots. This turned out to be an excellent choice. The parking was organized by the Western Nebraska Community College, which had free porta-potties and eclipse gear for sale. We ended up next to a family from Denver that we had met in line at the gas station. They all had eclipse glasses but no other optics, so I set up the Sun Funnel so they could watch with us, and they returned the favor by taking pictures of our party.
The Eclipse
As soon as we had the cars parked, I was busy setting up the Sun Funnel, while everyone else got folding chairs set up and got their eclipse glasses on. I got the photo above, my first shot of the eclipse, at 10:45 AM.
There was a wind out of the north that kept threatening to snatch our hats away, and it was flirting with blowing the scope over. I can’t remember ever setting up the Manfrotto tripod for low use, with the legs spread almost straight sideways, but I remembered from the documentation that doing so was possible. That fixed the stability issues with the scope, and from that point on, all we had to do was re-aim it every few minutes (I’d already made this switch in the family shot above – that shot is out of order in terms of eclipse phases). As I mentioned in a previous post, not only was the dollar store mustard bottle sun finder cheap and effective, but I could see the projected dot through the translucent walls of the bottle so I didn’t have to get my head behind or underneath it to aim the scope – handy when the sun was almost directly overhead.
A labeled shot from the end of the eclipse, when all six of the big sunspots were visible, with the Earth added for scale. All of the other crud on the image is dirt and bits of grass – that’s what happens when gear is left out in the wind in a grassy field for three hours.
There were half a dozen nice sunspots, and it was fun to watch the moon overtake them. A lot of the people who stopped by to look at the sun funnel weren’t familiar with sunspots, so I gave them the quick spiel: giant magnetic storms on the sun, with the biggest that we could see then being about the same size as planet Earth.
About halfway between first contact and totality, the north wind started pushing clouds across the sky, which you can see in the above video. This added some definite suspense to the proceedings, especially when, about 5 minutes before the start of totality, a huge “dreadnought class” cloud came over. I think everyone on the field was on pins and needles – we could still see the sun, as the next photo demonstrates, but it wasn’t what you’d call a great view.
Fortunately the cloud moved out of the way right at the start of totality. And I mean precisely then. Below is a shot from just a couple of seconds before, with the diamond ring effect haloed by the tail-end wisps of cloud. Those wisps moved out just as the moon covered the last light of the sun, and our view of totality was perfectly clear.
That photo above is my best eclipse shot. Vicki has a DSLR but I didn’t take it along. I did waste a few seconds, but only a few, trying to get a couple of HDR shots with my iPhone, but they didn’t really come out. I had read plenty of horror stories of people who basically missed their first eclipse messing around with cameras, so I resolved long ago that if I was lucky enough to have clear skies for totality, I’d try to spend them looking, not shooting.
For the most part, the partial phases of the eclipse were familiar to me from the 2012 and 2014 eclipses. Totality was a whole ‘nuther beast. This was my first total eclipse, and even though I had read a lot of eyewitness reports and seen some videos of other total eclipses, several things surprised me:
Neither of my previous eclipses had been close enough to total to produce the weirdly sharp shadows that you get on either side of totality, when the thin crescent sun acts more like a point source than a bright extended object. So I’d never seen that effect before, and neither had anyone that I was with. We had fun marveling at our shadows, but I didn’t think to get any pictures or video of them. You can see the sharp shadows starting at 1:25 in this video.
It got a lot darker a lot earlier than I expected. This was especially true in the last 10 minutes before totality. It was extremely weird – before the dreadnought cloud moved in, we were all aware of standing in direct sunlight, just not much of it. It wasn’t like diffuse sunlight coming through clouds, and it wasn’t like sunset light, either. I’ve never seen anything else quite like it – which I guess is part of the reason people chase eclipses, to see things you can’t see any other way.
The inner corona was a lot brighter than I expected. I couldn’t really see any of the outer corona, just a thin bright ring around the moon. It was bright white. The contrast between the blazing white of the corona and the absolute blackness of the moon made the latter even more unearthly. In Seeing in the Dark, Timothy Ferris described the moon during totality as an “awful black ball” and I can now vouch for the accuracy of that description. It doesn’t look right.
Even at the midpoint of totality, the sky was brighter than I had thought it would be, and the ground was darker. We all did look up, and saw Venus, Mars, Mercury, and Regulus, but I didn’t see any other stars; the stars didn’t ‘come out’ as I had expected. In contrast, right where we were, looking around at family members and other eclipse chasers, it was dark, like being outside half an hour after sunset. And the 360-degree twilight lit the horizon all the way around in shades of orange, salmon, pink, and violet. In general, the terrestrial effects of the eclipse were more pronounced and arresting that what was going on in the sky – with the undeniable exception of that awful black ball.
I assume that the atmospheric effects on either side of totality are symmetrical – that the weird light I mentioned above in point 2 extends just as far after totality as before, and that the 360-degree twilight extends just as far before totality as after. But that’s not how I perceived them. I noticed the oddly thin light before totality, and after totality had ended I was surprised at how long the sunset effect persisted. The above photo is from a minute and a half after the end of totality, looking north-northeast, about 90 degrees off the path of the shadow, and the twilight effect is still visible in the distance.
After Totality
Totality was a rush. In the aftermath we sat around talking happily about how amazing it had been, and watching on the sun funnel as the moon gradually uncovered the sun. London and I made pinhole projections – his is above, mine below.
We also wandered around until we found a cottonwood that was projecting crescent suns on the street. Here’s a photo:
And a video – this worked out better than expected, because the wind was blowing the leaves and branches around and making the crescent suns flicker, like sunlight glinting off moving water. Shame I didn’t think to turn the phone sideways, but I’d just had my mind blown, so I’m giving myself a pass.
All too soon it was winding down. The telescope and sun funnel had been the first things set up when we rolled in, and they were the last things put away when we left. Here’s my last shot, from 1:16 PM:
Ironically, after all the gloomy predictions, traffic was worse getting away from the eclipse than it had been getting to it. I’d hoped that maybe we could head south out of Alliance and fast-track it back to Ogallala on Highway 26, but that way was jammed up. So we went back the way we came. On the drive home we were the 5th and 6th vehicles in a train of 17, and we had to settle for a bit under 60 mph, but we still made it back in good time. There was another train blocking the access into Lakeside, so I still don’t know if the town has a public restroom.
The trip had one neat little coda. On the flight home, London had the window seat, and he spotted the young crescent moon, back in the evening sky after its big adventure. I passed him my phone, and he got some great shots. Here’s the best:
What now?
There will be other solar eclipses between now and the next “Great American Eclipse” of 2024, but most of them will happen in other parts of the world, and the chances that I’ll have the opportunity to go see them are slim. Here are the upcoming eclipses and transits that I am hoping to observe in the next decade – as always, assuming the skies cooperate:
January 31, 2018 – total lunar eclipse
January 21, 2019 – total lunar eclipse
November 11, 2019 – transit of Mercury
May 26, 2021 – total lunar eclipse
May 16, 2022 – total lunar eclipse
November 8, 2022 – total lunar eclipse
October 14, 2023 – annular solar eclipse
April 8, 2024 – total solar eclipse
March 14, 2025 – total lunar eclipse
March 3, 2026 – total lunar eclipse
That’s a pretty good lineup, I think. For more details on all of these events, see MrEclipse.com.
In sum, the eclipse was awesome, in every sense of the word. I get now why people become eclipse chasers. I’m not quite to the point where I can afford to go jetting around the world to catch every single one, but I will make it to every future eclipse that I can. If you ever get a chance to stand in the path of totality, go.
UPDATE 29 August: Mike’s comment below about Cthulhu reminded me that I needed to post another picture. After I put the diamond ring photo on Facebook, my friend Jarrod posted this modified version, which I can’t unsee. Cower before Ecl, the Dragon of Totality:
A quick note for all eclipse observers, but especially those who haven’t been able to find eclipse glasses: here’s the #1 best eclipse activity for kids, and not bad for adults, either. Each person needs a stack of index cards and a push-pin or thumbtack. They can pick out their names or make little drawings by punching holes in one index card, then use that to project little crescent suns on the other index card. Safe, foolproof, can easily eat up an hour or more. Everyone should do this, and take pictures and post them. Pics attached here are from the 2014 partial eclipse (observing report here).
I wrote up an observing guide (link) for people on the Western University of Health Sciences campuses in Lebanon, Oregon, and Pomona, California, but really this stuff applies for everyone on the path of totality (Lebanon) or off (Pomona). Except for the timings, and you can get local eclipse timings here. My more complete page on safely observing the sun is on the sidebar (link).
I stayed up late Friday night to catch the beginning of the lunar eclipse early Saturday morning. The penumbral eclipse started at 3:16 AM local time, and it was still going on when the sun rose. The umbral or ‘total’ eclipse was very brief, just five minutes between 4:58 and 5:03. Just like last October, I got London up to see it. He was kind enough to loan me his 60mm Meade refractor for the event, and he used his XT4.5. The little Meade refractor made photography easier by cutting down the light level without sacrificing contrast. I took all of these photos with my iPhone 5C shooting through a Celestron 8-24mm zoom eyepiece. As usual, I processed and composited the photos in GIMP.
I’m particularly happy with this shot of the full moon. I really need to do a composite image with all of my best full moon shots. One of these days.
When I first blogged about last week’s partial solar eclipse, I mentioned that a reporter had come out from the local paper, but that the story was unavailable behind the paper’s paywall. It turns out that I was mistaken. I had thought the story was paywalled because clicking on the front page link didn’t lead to anything more extensive, just the same short blurb and a link to subscribe. But that was because the main story hadn’t been written yet, not because it was paywalled. The full story was only published today. Here’s a link to the story online, and I’ll post a scan of the print version as soon as I get around to making one.
It’s a nice writeup, with lots of detail and just about everything correct. The only thing I’d change is in the last paragraph–the telescopes at the Claremont Public Library are not for rent, they’re free to check out, just like a library book. I haven’t blogged about our library telescope program yet because frankly it doesn’t need any additional exposure; we’re more than two years in, with two telescopes in circulation, and the wait list is still four months long. If and when the program gets to a point where it can handle more interest, I’ll see what I can do to fire some up!
Anyway, this gave me the opportunity to post a couple more photos: above, London drives the Sun Funnel, and below, some mid-eclipse sun dapples on the sidewalk.
Last Thursday afternoon I went to London’s school to show the eclipse to the students. I was rolling with the Astroscan-plus-Sun-Funnel combo, veteran of the 2012 annular eclipse and transit of Venus, and the GalileoScope that David DeLano built for me, now sporting a Baader solar film filter from AstroMediaShop.co.uk.
The eclipse started here at 2:11 PM, Pacific Daylight Time.
I’m still struggling to get good digiscoping photos with the iPhone. This one, shot through the filtered GalileoScope, is the least wretched of the lot. The immense sunspot group is AR 2192, the largest seen in 24 years. At nearly the size of Jupiter, It was easily naked-eye visible with eclipse glasses. There’s a nice video of it from before the eclipse at APOD.
Oh, I also passed out a lot of eclipse glasses. The best deal I have found on them is this pack of 30 for $33 from Amazon. Of that 30-pack, two got mailed off to relatives (along with our entire previous stash of eight), London and I each brought home a pair (London promptly disassembled his to see how they were put together–that’s my boy!), and the other 26 went home with other excited kids.
Incidentally, my favorite view of the eclipse was through the glasses, with no magnification. There is something awesome and terrible about watching another world come between you and sun, even partly.
I wanted to do an activity with the kids so I brought a pack of index cards and had them make pinhole projectors. That succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. The kids were completely occupied for a solid 20 minutes, and we could do the projections indoors and save our UV exposure for the scopes (which I brought inside, of course–you don’t leave a solar scope set up and unattended).
London’s school is Oakmont Elementary and ‘BLAST’ stands for Best Learning After School Time.
We also looked at pinhole projections of the eclipse cast by trees.
Just a bit after max eclipse, which was at 3:30.
The last of the wine, at 4:40. Unless I get really rich in the next couple of years, rich enough to go on eclipse cruises, my next solar eclipse will be in August of 2017. A total solar eclipse will cut a path from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast US. My tentative plan right now is to fly to Oklahoma, see the relatives, and then drive up to northern Kansas for the event. Kansas in August should be hot and sunny, and on the Great Plains you can usually see bad weather coming hundreds of miles off, which will let us adjust our targeting on the fly.
A guy from the Claremont Courier came out to interview me and some teachers, parents, and kids. Thanks to the paper’s paywall, I haven’t seen any more of the story than this web preview, which at least features two of London’s best friends. If anyone out there has a hardcopy they’d be willing to scan or pass along, I’d be very grateful.Update Oct. 31: Whoops! The story wasn’t paywalled; it was unavailable because it wasn’t done. Here’s the full story, and here’s a post with a couple more eclipse shots.
All in all, I think about 90 people got to see the eclipse through my scopes. The kids were mesmerized–so were the adults, actually–and I was very, very happy. Can’t wait until the next one!
It had been six and a half years since I had actually watched a lunar eclipse (back in February, 2008), so I stayed up late Tuesday night to watch the lunar eclipse early Wednesday morning.
London didn’t stay up that late, he went to bed at the usual time and I got him up about 3:00 AM. We spent about half an hour together, watching the Earth’s shadow gradually overtake the moon until the moon was entirely eclipsed. I had set up my pimped-out GalileoScope (it’s on the second tripod in the background), but after a lot of scope- and eyepiece-swapping, the setup I settled on was my 4-inch refractor and 8-24mm zoom eyepiece.
My Nikon Coolpix 4500 gave up the ghost last year. I got a Canon S100 to replace it, but I dropped it out in the field this spring, and I haven’t gotten it repaired yet. So other than the DSLR Vicki uses at work, my only camera is the one in my iPhone 5C, and I used it for all of my eclipse photos. For most point-and-shoot photo purposes, it’s all I need. As an astronomical camera, it leaves much to be desired. There are apps out there that let you control the exposure and shutter speed, but I haven’t investigated them much yet.
When you first hold the iPhone camera up to the eyepiece, all you will see of the moon is an undetailed spotlight. The trick is to tap and hold on the moon for a few seconds to kick in the exposure lock and focus lock. That will gear down the exposure to the point that you can start getting decent photos. The focus lock is a little squirrelly – sometimes one part of the image is better-focused than another (for example, because the camera is not perfectly parallel to the light beam coming through the scope), and the camera will seize on the out-of-focus portion for the focus lock. In that case, you can usually get things back to good by tweaking the focus of the telescope, using the image on the camera screen to tell when the image is best focused.
All of the photos above have been rotated, resized, and lightly sharpened in GIMP. Max eclipse was at 3:55. The moon was entirely in Earth’s umbra, but it wasn’t centered in the umbra, so the northern limb was definitely brighter than the southern one, and the photos record that.
In sum, it was a lot of fun. Even the fussing about with the camera was rewarding – the iPhone may not be a replacement for a decent point-and-shoot camera when it comes to digiscoping, but it was still satisfying to learn how to use it for that purpose.
Now we’re getting prepared for the solar eclipse in a couple of weeks, and keeping our fingers firmly crossed for clear skies. Stay tuned.
The end of the February 2008 lunar eclipse, as seen from Merced, CA.
Some big things coming up this month, especially for observers in the western US and in SoCal and the Southwest specifically. In chronological order they are:
A total lunar eclipse early in the morning on Wednesday, Oct. 8. These are the PDT timings for Los Angeles, from TimeandDate.com.
1:17 AM – penumbral eclipse beings
2:18 AM – partial eclipse begins
3:27 AM – total eclipse begins
3:55 AM – maximum eclipse (moon is farthest inside Earth’s shadow)
4:22 AM – total eclipse ends
5:32 AM – partial eclipse ends
6:32 AM – penumbral eclipse ends
An early phase of the May 2012 annular eclipse, photographed at Page, Arizona.
A partial solar eclipse in the afternoon of Thursday, Oct. 23. Again, these are PDT timings for LA, from NASA’s eclipse website, especially this table.
2:08 PM – eclipse begins
3:28 PM – max eclipse
4:40 PM – eclipse ends
London and me at the 2010 AASP.
On the two days right after the solar eclipse, the 2014 All-Arizona Star Party will be taking place at the Hovatter Road airstrip in western Arizona. London and I have been three times now, in 2010, 2012, and 2013 (click on links for my observing reports), and we’ve always had a fantastic time. See the star party webpage for details.
10 Minute Astronomy 
