Some friends and I traveled to southern Illinois, near Golconda, to watch the eclipse. It was incredible and for the most part we had decent viewing conditions. Unfortunately a rogue cloud with evil intent blocked most of totality. The cloud cleared the eclipse with about 15 seconds left of totality so we were able to see the amazing corona for a very short time and the diamond ring as the sun started to reappear. Also the day turning to night, birds stopped singing and cicadas starting to chirp was an eerily amazing phenomenon. Even with the cloud, well worth the trip!
I took a few images of the partial phases with my Nikon D5300 and SV80ST and of course SGP. I know SGP isn’t exactly ideal for eclipse photography, but it’s what I know and I could script it all out and then not worry about fiddling with equipment during the show.
I put together a simple animation of the partial phases. Nothing special and you’ve seen it a hundred times already, but this is my very first solar imaging experience and first with a DSLR so I’m happy with how it turned out.
Looks good. I am working on my images now, although they were taken with a combination of BYE and and intervalometer.
Weather was pretty good here in Central Oregon. Just the tiniest bit of smoke in the air but nothing to cause issues. I happened to live under 1:15 of totality, complete with my observatory. We had about 30 people here, I had my FSQ for the camera (5D III) and another scope set up for folks to looks thru. It all went well.
Good thing the eclipse was not a day later since the day after we went under heavy smoke and then clouds and are only now coming out from under those.
Wow - that is really good. I especially like the frames with the extended corona. Just as well you were not kicked off the site! It is one of those strange coincidences of nature that the Moon and Sun are so evenly sized.
