![]() In 1969 while at the University of Miami, some college buddies and I, on the spur of the moment, decided at 11:30 on a Friday night to view the launch of Apollo 10 scheduled for 9am the next morning. The eclipse photos are on a Facebook page, but you don't need to have a Facebook account to see them. I also captured the entire eclipse using a CHDK time lapse script running inside a Canon EOS-M3 looking through an 80mm APO refractor. Wow! Wow! Finally, I glued myself back to the eyepiece.Īs soon as the first hint of sunlight shone through gaps in the Moon's mountains, it felt like it went all the way through my eyes and out the back of my head! I learned that you can't see Bailey's beads through the eyepiece of a high power telescope! Then I went back to the eclipsed Sun, naked eye, and took the whole scene in for a few moments. Wow! Then I glanced around and recognized Venus, then Jupiter and saw a bunch of other stars to the north. I unglued myself from the eyepiece (one of the hardest things I've ever done) to take a look at the corona. It was so incredibly beautiful, like nothing I've seen before! That's the main image burned into my memory forever. The Sun filled the field, so I got a great close-up view of the large, red solar prominence. Thanks!ĭuring totality, I watched through a Vixen 117mm telescope. I observed first and fourth contact with 10x50 binoculars with solar filters made from eclipse glasses, as seen in the June(?) Sky&Telescope, and they worked great! It really helped to use the binocs, especially at those extremities, plus we could make out the sun spots, which was cool. Maybe the most surprising thing was how fast the light came back after totality. Saw the diamond ring at 3rd contact, which was amazing. I saw either Regulus or Mercury with about 30 seconds left (still trying to figure which). The sky wasn't as dark as we expected, and only Venus was obvious among the planets. I made out a few pink prominences on the western limb. Torrington isn't a very big place, and there were about a dozen of us where we were, but when totality was beginning we could hear everyone around town cheering (that was cool!). My wife and I were in Torrington, WY, and it was our first total eclipse, and it was glorious. I must say the two Sky and Telescope webinars hosted by Fred Espenak were exceptionally helpful! Thank You!!!! The set-up and automation produced beautiful images allowing me to view totality through binoculars with my own eyes without worry or distractions of operating the camera. I imaged the eclipse with a Nikon D810 controlled by Solar Eclipse Maestro Software running on a Mac Book Air, a Nikon 200mm-500mm lens and an Astrotrac Tracking Mount. My Father-in-law and I traveled from Florida and Texas to Eastern Oregon and viewed the eclipse from BLM lands near John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. While watching the coronal aura change right before my eyes, the sun became alive. During those brief 2 minutes, I could truly understand why ancient humans worshipped the sun and moon. Observing the sun and moon during totality evoked primal feelings of awe and wonder. The solar eclipse and especially totality, was the most visually spectacular natural phenonoma I have observed in my entire life.
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