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| Eclipse Day:
This eclipse was a short two minutes, 8-1/2
seconds from our site. Barely long enough to do
any serious work. Trying to operate two cameras
was taking a real risk of blowing something. My
primary shots were through a Meade ETX at F/13.5
using an Olympus OM-2 equipped with a motor drive.
I pulled the solar filter about 10 seconds before
2nd contact and watched the viewfinder of the
camera from a distance to determine when it was
safe to look. All the time, I took photos every 1/2
second as the last bits of the sun disappeared in
order to capture the best moment of 'Bailey's
Beads." Bailey's Beads are where the last
bits of the Sun shine through the valleys on the
limb of the moon and appear like beads on a
necklace. The exposures were 1/1000th second
using EliteChrome 200 slide film. |
 Bailey's
Beads
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| Because the ETX mount is not
sufficient for long exposures (at least with the
motor drive), I limited myself to shorter
exposures of prominences. Here is one around mid
eclipse at 1/1000th second. One of the great
things about the ETX telescope is that by
flipping a lever, you can visually study the sun
through an eyepiece. Visually, the prominence on
the right appeared to be detached, even though it
clearly is not. If I had time to properly study
it, I probably would have noticed the thin bridge
of material stretching to the surface. Alson
Wong reports that with the naked eye he could see
the prominences at the 3 o'clock and 8 o'clock
positions. There were obvious hot spots in the
Sun's corona at the 2 o'clock ant 9 o'clock
positions.
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 Closeup
of Prominences
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| With a secondary camera, I
got the above shot using a 300mm telephoto lens.
The exposure was for 1/2 second at F/5.6 using
EliteChrome 200 slide film. The picture shows the
corona extending out about two solar radii in all
directions with somewhat evenly spaced radial
spikes. Visually, the radial spikes was the most
noticeable thing about the eclipse. To the eye,
they stood out much brighter than the rest of the
corona. |
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| Alson Wong took the
following image. It is a composite image combined
from a series of images. He used a Celestron C5
at F/10 and EliteChrome 200 slide film. I believe
the various pictures that make up the image are 1/1000
second, 1/60 sec., 1/15 sec., 1/4 sec., and 1
second. |
| http://home.earthlink.net/~alsonwong/images/Solar_System/Eclipse5Composite9400.jpg |
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| Alson also took the
following picture of the Diamond Ring at Third
Contact. It is a 1/60th exposure. |
| http://home.earthlink.net/~alsonwong/images/Solar_System/Eclipse60DR400.jpg |
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| You can find more of Alson's
work at: Home
Page |
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| That
night we had a post-eclipse dinner celebration at
the Caravansary Hotel with all kinds of
entertainment including a belly dancer, who knew
how to work the crowd. Unfortunately, I do not
have pictures of our guides embarrassing
themselves. |
