Welp, our first plan was to head for Ravenden Arkansas. Four minutes and 12 seconds of totality. But the weather started looking iffy, and it would mean we’d be away from home for probably 10-12 hours before we got home. Which is fine for us, but the three dogs, and two 2 cats, might have had an issue or two with no one being here for that long. So, that sealed it, we were staying home.
It was said we’d get 97% coverage here, and that ain’t bad. But it’s not totality. If you have never experienced totality I can only describe it as a few minutes of almost creepy lighting, that is very mesmerizing, something about it, you want to soak up every second of the experience, and then it’s gone. Gone too soon. You wish there was more.
We got a few minutes of that creepy lighting, that casts an unusual pall on the surroundings, but it didn’t last long. Very soon the moon was retreating, never reaching totality. Which was a bit of a bummer. But hey, it was at home. We made the best of it.
I have an Orion ED 80mm apochromatic telescope. Excellent glass. This scope was mounted on my Celestron CG5 mount, with tracking. It was outfitted with a full aperture solar filter. I have another small 90mm achro refractor, that I use as a projector. I set up a white board, and focus the image of the sun/eclipse coming through the telescope, on to the white board. 100% safe to look at, as is the other scope with the full aperture solar filter.
I have some ding dang eclipse glasses. Bought them for the last eclipse. Thought I knew exactly where they were. But dammit, even after turning the house upside down and shaking it three times, those little bastards never were found. My luck, I will trip over them before I go to bed. We were still able to observe the eclipse directly though, by passing my welding helmet around. 😉
I have a little 16 mp Sony Cyber Shot camera, that I made a contraption for, that allows me to secure it to an eyepiece in a telescope. I’ve taken numerous pics with this little rig, it works. Speaking of pics… This was my first one of the day, just to make sure things were working. You can see some sun spots, and the focus isn’t great. It looked decent through the eyepiece, but I was battling lots, and lots, of clouds, often being totally obscured, and the seeing was terrible. Even when it seemed clear there were wispy clouds in the way almost 100% of the time. But I persevere. EDIT: These pics will enlarge if you click on them.
After that shot a huge cloud moved in, and by the time I could finally get another pic, the eclipse was underway. I missed first contact!
Well, it’s on! All I can do is wait for opportunities between the clouds. Drinking iced tea, passing the ole welding helmet around like it was a fat doobie, and taking pics when I can. 😉 FYI, the pics that are whitish, means the cloud cover was thick. The yellowish pics means the cloud cover wasn’t as bad. I’m not sure it was ever perfectly clear.
You can see the moon steadily eating away at the sun. Closing in on that sun spot. This next one was right at the edge of the sunspot.
Sunspot long gone now.
This next one, was about the maximum coverage for our location. With an optical doubling of some sort…
Now we are heading back the other way.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, I missed out on first contact. So I was hoping to catch final contact. I’m steadily taking pics every few minutes. I heard an airplane buzzing around, I was too concerned with what I was doing to pay it any mind. But as I was waiting for the camera to shoot (I use a 10 second delay, so that my touching the camera, which causes vibrations, that 10 seconds will allow them to settle down before the camera takes the shot,) So the camera takes the shot, then a second or two later the camera shows the pic you caught. NO FUCKING WAY! Thats’ exactly what I said when I saw the pic.
Are you kidding me? No fucking way! But there it is. Sometimes, you just have to be in the right place, at the right time, and shit happens. I can’t win the lottery, but every great once in a while, I manage something pretty cool. Okay, back to pics, but damn… You will see us working towards final contact.
And this was as close as I could get before the clouds completely obscured me again.
Not a bad day. Wasn’t the best eclipse I’ve experienced, but all in all, for being out in the front yard, not bad at all. Got to share the day with family, got to enjoy the show, with all the comforts of home. I’ll take it.
Hope you guys and gals had a good eclipse.
Nuther EDIT: Just in case anyone notices, the sunspots appear to have changed places on the sun in the later pics. My equatorial mount had gone as far as it could in the original orientation. After a time, while tracking, the mount got to a point where it was interfering with itself. So I had to finagle the mount around to another position that would work, which meant I had to turn the diagonal that the eyepiece is in, which the camera is attached to. That change of orientation, caused the sunspots, and even the way the moon appears as it blocks the sun, to change orientation. Any oddities there, are strictly from moving the mount, and/or diagonal around. Doing visual astronomy those things matter not at all…
Evidence Based Reality 
IMO, that picture with the plane was FAR more captivating than any of the actual eclipse. That shot alone is worth ANY of the others! There are literally thousands of regular eclipse pics out there … but who has one with a plane right in the middle of the action?
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Yeah, that was pretty special. I still can’t believe that shot was caught.
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Great photos!
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Thanks Grouchy. I did the best I could given the conditions. I wish the pics would have turned out better. But it is what it is. You can’t beat mother nature. You can only roll with what you get.
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I was just starting to get into astrophotography with the 11″ Celestron schmidt cassegrain when the town put in street lights directly across from me, plus another about 100 feet down on the corner and a third just behind me so that pretty much eliminated any hope I had of getting decent results. Sigh.
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I feel your pain Grouchy. I have Bortle 4 skies out my front door. My neighbors always leave their 2 porch lights on, AND, they juat had a goddamn in-security light put up.
Scared of the dark. And killing my sky.
Not good for my general well being either. I dare say I got a bit grouchy about it. Thing about stupid, you can’t fix, or even talk to it.
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It occurred to me, the answer for us both is to find a good dark site. Travel is the only way we can get away from the fraidycats who think the night sky should be destroyed by light.
But travelling with big scopes is a chore.
I used to be a part of an astronomy club. I’m sure they are still going. But it’s an hour + to get to their location. I have been known to take my 12.5″ dob to a lonely back road, where there is an open field on both sides of the road, and no insecurity lights anywhere. I haven’t done that in a long time. I only did that for rare occaisions, comets, or nova, etc. that I could not see from our homes NW to SW view.
I built a light shield that I used for years, it blocked the porch lights, and local traffic. But this new insecurity light probably killed my home viewing.
Lot to think about…
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You gotta share the airplane pic on the Aviation tag, maybe pull out that pic and write a post about it — simply fantastic!!!! Dawn
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Pardon my ignorance, I have much of it. But where and how, is this aviation tag?
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When you post, and it asks you from WordPress which tags you want, you type in Aviation. I’m assuming you put Eclipse as a tag when you did the post I saw, as I went to my Reader and put in Eclipse and your post came up in the lineup of stories about the eclipse. Let me know if that explains it enough — otherwise maybe we could talk over the phone. I’m bad with computers but have figured a few things out on WordPress because of my blogs :))
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Ahh, ok. I’m aware you can put the tags in when posting. I thought that once posted you could not go back and change them. But I’m not sure.
But I think you are suggesting a new post, with the plane shot tagged with aviation. I’ll stew on it 🙂
Oh, welcome aboard!
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Yes — You can also re-blog your post with new tags — I did that recently on my Journal of Dawn blog, as the Soul Horse Ride tags on a recent post didn’t come through. It seems if I put more than maybe 6 tags NOTHING at all comes onto the reader lists. I would suggest putting the eclipse/airplane shot at the top of your post — that way the photo should be on the excerpt for people to see and peak their interest to click on your post. Then you can either make a fresh post, or re-blog the previous post, like I did here: https://journalofdawn.wordpress.com/2024/04/07/discover-soul-horse-ride/ Best to you! Again, your photo is AMAZING!!!!!
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Hi Shelldigger. I am not interested in astronomy per se as a star watcher and have no interest in eclipses. Maybe it results from my dislike and actual fear of darkness due to my childhood. In the dark, bad things happened to little Scottie.
Having said that, I do love the science of the cosmos, the astronomy of the planets and their movements.
But what I find most interesting and love about your post is seeing a new dimension of yourself I never knew. You are a very dynamic and diverse active person. Your interest go from DIY home and mechanic things, to bread making, to raising your children with grace, to being a long time active practitioner in some rather scary risky stuff such as your diving. Add to that now you are an amateur astronomer. The depth to you and your personality is grand and well worth following to explore.
Thank you for that. While I may not share the same interests, your passion for them gives me a brief glimpse into the wonderful and often scary world you have lived. Best wishes for you and your family. Hugs. Scottie
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Damn Scottie, now my head is too big to get out the door!
But thanks man. We are all diverse in numerous ways. It just depends on how much of that we want to let out where people can see it. 😉
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