Eclipse fun

Had a great time visiting with woodturner and wizard John Lucas today. Charlie Anderson drove down from Maryland and we bopped over to the Lucas estate. I took my 8" telescope with a solar filter and also projected an image of the sun into a cardboard box from a smaller telescope.

The most amazing thing for me was during the totality I took the filter off the big telescope and could see a number of red solar prominences around the moon - the first I've ever seen with my own eyes!

Some photos:

Me with some of my toys.
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I held the DSLR camera up to the eyepiece of the telescope. The optical configuration didn't allow a photo of the full sun but this shows the color and level of detail we could see.
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The cardboard box projection allowed several people to see the image at the same time.
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The sunspots are visible in this projection:
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These are eclipse projections on the sidewalk from pinhole lenses made by overlapping leaves high above:
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Lucas, friend, and son.
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JKJ

John, Thanks so much for taking the time to share theses images! We drove forty miles to get away from heavy clould cover, but then were successful. Our time here was 1:10pm for the max here in Iowa. Justin

John, Great pictures; thanks for sharing. I was in my workshop all afternoon and completely forgot about the eclipse.

Thanks for sharing. We had overcast skies & rain, a total washout. The skies cleared and the sun came out an hour after the eclipse :(

We clouded up less than a minute before first contact, looked like it was going to storm. Then, right around peak eclipse (about 90% for us), it cleared up enough that we were able to don the glasses and watch for a bit. I was able to take some photos that exceeded my expectations (low though they were) with my iPhone 6 zoomed in 100% and the lens covered with the $1 glasses. By the time the sun was 50% exposed, I could no longer take a picture that showed anything other than a full disk. I should have charged for others to use my glasses...they got passed around quite a bit.

Come 4/8/2024 (also a Monday), I WILL be taking off work, and I WILL have better equipment, as I won't have to go far to get a great view--we'll be right on the edge of the band of totality.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bruce Page

Thanks for sharing. We had overcast skies & rain, a total washout. The skies cleared and the sun came out an hour after the eclipse :(

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Same here. We were in the centerline of totality, too. Now I have to wait another 7 years.

Charlie Anderson, woodturner and wildlife/nature photographer, took a bunch of photos. This one is pretty cool. You can see some of the solar prominences on the edge.

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Charlie is shooting the partial eclipse here. The filter comes off to get pictures of the corona and prominences at totality.

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We also saw the amazing shimmering shadow lines running at high speed across the concrete on the edges of totality, only lasts a few seconds. I got a bit of video of that.

The sun did play peek-a-boo with the clouds before the totality but decided to give us a perfect view for the main event. It was actually quite interesting to watch the wisps of the cloud edges moving across the image in the telescope.

JKJ

Mother Nature kindly provides some cloud cover right at the projected peak for our area so we wouldn't be in any danger. LOL

"The most amazing thing for me was during the totality I took the filter off the big telescope and could see a number of red solar prominences around the moon - the first I've ever seen with my own eyes!"

Baily's Beads Affect?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Michael Weber

"The most amazing thing for me was during the totality I took the filter off the big telescope and could see a number of red solar prominences around the moon - the first I've ever seen with my own eyes!"

Baily's Beads Affect?

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No, the beads (or the diamond necklace effect if just one) is where the bright surface of the sun is still visible, shining through the valleys between mountains on the rim of the moon. The sun's protosphere was completely covered and the bright white was hidden when the prominences were visible.

The solar prominences are jets of plasma which shoot far above the sun's surface and usually loop back down. The prominences we saw through the telescope were similar but a little more distinct than those shown in the post "Charlie's photo" in this thread. We could see more than what showed up in that photo too. (It is incredibly difficult to get the perfect eclipse photo since you don't have much time to play with the exposure and a reshoot is not possible!)

This page shows one such loop, a large one!
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard...lar-prominence

The prominenances were distinctly red as compared to the white corona. I didn't count carefully but I think there were 4-5 easily visible when the moon was perfectly centered. Seeing these was a milestone for me.

JKJ

I managed one of the Diamond on the back half, but not the beads. We had a wispy cloud cover right at totality (of course) but luckily cleared away. I drove myself to as close to center as I could manage so got some 2 min 30 seconds. Incredible experience.
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Here's a photo I took from our viewing location in Hopkinsville, KY.
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We drove from Ca to Idaho to see it. Fantastic, and well worth the trip. We rented a parking spot in a field near a church in the center of totality.

They sold 1,000 spots, and it was full. People from all over US and Canada.

Perfect weather.

We (LOML, my dog and I) took a road trip to Nebraska to witnes the event with my mother, father, and son at a friend's house under the path of totality. The trip was wonderful, experiencing several national parks in Utah and Arizona along the way and back. The day of the eclipse was full of broken clouds, but was clear at the time of totality. Pretty amazing event.

Planned it for over a year.