Partial Solar Eclipse Of October 23rd

(Note, I know today’s normally “Flash Fiction Thursday.” If I can get something written quickly tomorrow, I’ll try to get it posted by the 1200EDT/0900PDT “deadline.” If not, I’ll post it tomorrow after the “deadline,” because the Flash Fiction structure is sort of like Drew Carey’s “Whose Line Is It Anyway,” where “everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.”)

As predicted, celestial mechanics carried our planet, our moon, and our primary star into alignment today. As advertised, I was there with a camera rig cobbled together with duct tape and baling wire. If it was good enough for the moon fifteen days ago, it’s good enough for the sun.

14:10 PDT, two minutes before the start of the eclipse. As you can see, my fooling around with the $2 solar film card duct taped in front of the lens didn’t improve the resolution a ton, but maybe a bit from yesterday. The huge sunspot is clearly visible even with this simple rig.

14:12 PDT, first contact.

14:28 PDT. I was at the CAF hanger trying to get some work finished up, and running out to the car every fifteen minutes or so to pull the tripod and camera out of the car, line it up, take a quick set of pictures, put it all away, and then running back in to get some more work done. In other words, a normal day.

14:40 PDT. Even shooting thorough a sheet of silvered mylar, most of these pictures are taken at 1/2000 second. The sun is really freakin’ bright! (Thank you, Captain Obvious!)

15:00 PDT, as I was packing up to leave the CAF and head to another meeting.

15:26 PDT, maximum coverage as seen here in Southern California. I was only halfway to that next meeting, but pulled off the freeway, found the first parking lot I could, and set up again with about a minute to spare before shooting this.

15:33 PDT, still in some random parking lot off of the 101 Freeway. Time to get moving again, they’re starting to look at me funny from the windows of the office building where I pulled in. In other words, a normal day.

15:58, in the parking lot outside of where my meeting is.

16:04 PDT, what I figured would be my last pictures of the day due to that 16:00 meeting.

16:15 PDT, people at my meeting wanted to see too, so it’s quickly back to out to the parking lot, set up the rig, let others take a look, shoot off a last set of pictures, tear down and stow the rig in the car, and back to the meeting.

The eclipse would last for another twenty-four minutes from this point, but that was it for me. I hope you got to see it (SAFELY!) wherever you were at, or at least got a chance to watch the feed from Griffith Observatory that NASA-TV was showing.

If you got pictures, feel free to share them in the comments!