I will shine it through my transit onto a card so the neighbors can ooh and awe. It will be covered around 85% here.
I haven't checked the zenith angle. I hoped to use a transit for projection, but it may be difficult at mid day.
OK, so I THOUGHT we would be flying during the totality, but I wasn't the one who planned the trip. We flew to a small airport in Rockwood, TN. Not many people there when we landed about 1 hour before start of eclipse. The next airport to the west (Crossville) was getting really heavy traffic into it when we landed. But planes started landing where we were right after we got there, including a jet and a king air. A bunch of other nearby airports had no ramp space left.
In flight:
I usually like to fly cross country under an IFR flight plan (meaning we would be on a pre-determined route, and ATC would be watching out for traffic), but we returned VFR, which was a good thing because they were turning down a lot of IFR requests due to overloaded controllers. In the past I would have been nervous, but having ADS-B on board meant that we could see all nearby traffic, of which there was very little. We did have to ascend and descend a few times due to clouds (need to stay clear when on a VFR flight).
Here is the picture I took in totality.
KMNV, Monroe County airport a bit east of Rockwood and down in the Tennessee Valley had over 100 planes show up. All of the ramp space was taken and they had planes pushed back into the grass along the entire length of the 3643' runway.
I was a few miles away on a hilltop laying out a house during the owner's eclipse party. I pulled out an old Topcon 303 that I have a 90?ø eyepiece and a solar filter for and set it up so that everyone could see the event up close.
I set up a Wild T2 with 90?ø prism and solar filter and it worked great to no surprise. The people that poured out of adjoining offices were very surprised when I mentioned that the instrument was from the 50's and older than me. Not to sure which was the surprise though. I have been using GPS since the mid 90's and I have participated in a sun shot, but, never done one. Just how accurate were they?
I called Monroe County before leaving Pittsburgh, they said they were full but we could park at our own risk, first come first served, in the grass. A few others said the same thing, all reserved. Rockwood was pretty laid back.
Upper Cumberland had a $50 landing fee, but they supposedly had food trucks, etc. But they were all sold out.
Here is a photo taken by someone that has the proper equipment, experience and artistry. This is similar to what I saw in Alliance, NE.
From the http://www.spaceweather.com web site, here is more info on Mark Rosengarten's Eclipse Photo
And here is a gallery of photos of the eclipse. Solar Eclipse Photo Gallery
And now some amateur photos taken through my Wild Heerbrugg T-2 theodolite with diagonal eyepiece using the neighbor's iPhone. Photos were taken in my dad's front yard.
The first is of the partial eclipse using a Wild Roelofs Solar Prism. Sorry for all the spots. It has been a while since I use the diagonal eyepiece and it appears to have some mold or fungal growth. It was a "practice shot" to see if the iPhone would work. The practice shots with my Nikon S6900 were a disaster.
This photo is taken through the same instrument without any solar filter at the total eclipse. The cross hairs in my theodolite are barely visible.
This is a photo of my wife viewing the partial eclipse through my T-2. The Wild instrument in the foreground is a T-1A with diagonal eyepiece prisms. They were a big hit with the kids in the cul-de-sac.
Another photo of the T-1A. With zenith angles in the neighborhood of 30?ø, the eyepiece prisms made it more difficult to find the Sun than using the 90?ø eyepieces.
Norm Larson, post: 442739, member: 7899 wrote: I set up a Wild T2 with 90?ø prism and solar filter and it worked great to no surprise. The people that poured out of adjoining offices were very surprised when I mentioned that the instrument was from the 50's and older than me. Not to sure which was the surprise though. I have been using GPS since the mid 90's and I have participated in a sun shot, but, never done one. Just how accurate were they?
You'll get a lot of different opinions on how precise solar observations were. There are two methods, the altitude method and the hour-angle method. With a good, accurate timepiece you can get better precision with the hour-angle method. I would set my (hp41) clock to the atomic clock at the beginning of the day, and check it at the end of the day, and adjust my times accordingly. I had the opportunity to do a solar shot where we had previously done a stellar shot and it appeared to be within around 15 arc-seconds, but that was perhaps mere luck/coincidence.
The arrival of the eclipse in 82% area at approximately 1:05pm was at such an angle that I did not set up an instrument.
I attempted to catch it with a sony digicam recorder and that was not happening very well.
Being the only person in my backyard, I simply put a Sokkisha OF1 solar filter over each eye and looked directly at the eclipse.
Luckily the clouds allowed were in an agreeable position long enough for it to happen.
Tom Adams, post: 442771, member: 7285 wrote: You'll get a lot of different opinions on how precise solar observations were. There are two methods, the altitude method and the hour-angle method. With a good, accurate timepiece you can get better precision with the hour-angle method. I would set my (hp41) clock to the atomic clock at the beginning of the day, and check it at the end of the day, and adjust my times accordingly. I had the opportunity to do a solar shot where we had previously done a stellar shot and it appeared to be within around 15 arc-seconds, but that was perhaps mere luck/coincidence.
My current trend using the sun has me well sub-10 arc seconds...not single shots, but 8-10, D&R, reduced, with time corrected before and after (averaged as well). All credit due to Larry Scott's masterful Excel spreadsheet.
Before I started using GPS, using the atomic clock time, and a hand held Garmin Etrex, I was getting sub-10 arc second sun shots. More like 2 to 4 seconds. I offended wonder what they used on the surveys I was following. Exact time and position are the key to accuracy. Had my sun filter watching the eclipse Tuesday.
Jules J., post: 442822, member: 444 wrote: Had my sun filter watching the eclipse Tuesday.
You probably came away disappointed if you tried to view the eclipse on Tuesday!
My house sits at 99.97 % of total eclipse so we headed north about 20 miles to a county park where we got a minute and 45 seconds of totality. After finding out my eclipse glasses from Amazon were not certified I got my hands on some AstroSolar Safety Film and made filters for my 10x50 binoculars. They worked great and the view was incredible. First one for me and I am glad I got to see the corona and the 360 degrees of twilight. I removed the filters for a look at the corona during totality and the colors were amazing to see.
I was also able to fashion an objective filter for my T-16 from the same film. This T-16 has a solar reticle and when viewing the sun, It is almost perfectly the same size making precise pointing fairly easy. Way cheaper than a Roelofs, too.
Mark Mayer, post: 442824, member: 424 wrote: You probably came away disappointed if you tried to view the eclipse on Tuesday!
Yea! That was Monday! LOL! It's been a long day! :confused:
This whole eclipse thing reminded me of a very old joke.
There was a church in a small town with a small balcony which provided overflow seating on Easter Sunday and the rare large funeral or wedding. This was in the days when nearly all women wore long dresses to church and men were assumed to be upright members of the community at all cost. One Sunday a revival was held which dictated the use of the aforementioned balcony. The revivalist preacher really knew how to stir up the crowd. He had them standing, swaying and doing all sorts of gyrations fervently as he shouted out his message to all within earshot. One of the somewhat elderly spinsters of the community was in the front row of the balcony. Somehow she lost her footing as she was bumped by another enthusiastic member in attendance and fell over the edge of the balcony. Fortunately, she was able to grab the railing and hold on for dear life. The revivalist, seeing her awkward position and wishing to support her dignity, called out to the congregation with the warning, "Do not look up at Sister Jensen's predicament lest the Lord strike you blind." An equally elderly gent who had pursued Sister Jensen decades earlier decided to take the risk to look up her skirts and declared aloud, "I think I can risk one eye" as he slapped his right hand over his right eye and looked upward.
We had a Topcon solar filter at the office, and one of the guys had a spotting scope for a telescope, and he projected the image onto a piece of paper. I have a auto darkening welding helmet that I was able to turn up to 13, and adjusted the sensitivity all the way up, and it had about the same darkness as the Topcon solar filter.
I did check the NASA website before I tried the welding helmet. They said that a 12 to 14 darkness shade would be okay.
Storms started popping up very close to the totality occurrence, but it did not get as dark as I expected. We were in an area that was supposed to have about 93% totality. We are very close to the area that will experience the solar eclipse in 2024. I'll be a little better prepared next time.
A Harris, post: 442798, member: 81 wrote: The arrival of the eclipse in 82% area at approximately 1:05pm was at such an angle that I did not set up an instrument.
I realized that would be a problem with a normal setup, but I didn't care about measuring angles so didn't have to s set up the tripod level. I set one long leg and two shorter legs to give the transit a tilt. Weight on the long leg made it stable. Then the telescope easily cleared the base of the transit when pointed, so I didn't need a right angle eyepiece.
I used a paper towel tube taped to the telescope with a white screen at the end, and a cutout in the side to view the screen. It worked well enough the day before to see a sunspot.
Unfortunately the clouds here gave us a very hazy view until the eclipse was mostly over. We were at 91% and you could observe some darkening but it wasn't much different than heavier clouds would have produced. I got a short break with a nice view of about 2/3 of the sun with a bite out of it for a few minutes and then solid cloud cover returned..
