Shortly after 08:00 this morning the Moon began to move in front of the Sun, causing a partial solar eclipse as seen from here in Los Angeles. In other places, along a path from Oregon, directly over Albuquerque, into Texas, directly over San Antonio, into the Gulf of Mexico, over Central America, and over South America, folks got to see a “Ring of Fire” annular eclipse. NASA-TV had an excellent program covering it.
Here I made a simple attempt to photograph the progress of the eclipse. No fancy solar telescope, no H-alpha filters, just my 300 mm telephoto lens, a Canon xt DSLR on a tripod, and a handheld solar eclipse filter held in front of the lens.
09:45, a minute or two after maximum coverage in LA. The Moon has come in from the upper left and is moving down toward the lower left.
09:53 – the color of the Sun varies a bit depending on the length of the exposure. Even with the eclipse filter and the Sun’s disk partially obscured, the Sun is BRIGHT.
10:06 – For each set of pictures I was shooting a series of images, “bracketing” the exposures from 1/4000 second down to about 1/100 second. Then from each set I picked the best picture based on focus, exposure, and other factors.
10:26 – The dark film used to make the eclipse glasses isn’t optically flat, so taking pictures through it introduces a fair amount of blur. To truly do a nice job on this subject I would need a precision, optically flat glass filter, which can be a bit pricey. I’ll be looking at it for next year’s total eclipse, but not today.
10:45 – Getting close to the end of the eclipse.
10:54 – These last three images are just a minute apart as the eclipse was ending.
10:55 – Just the tiniest little sliver of the Moon’s edge is still covering 1% of the Sun’s disc in the lower left.
10:56 – Last contact
I hope that you got to see the eclipse today, or at least had (or will have) a chance to see it online. Now it’s time to start planning for next April 8th, the last full solar eclipse in North America this century.
I’ll see y’all in Texas! April 8th! Be there or be square!
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 