The pressure was on! More than 50 residents and friends in my Mom's neighborhood showed up for the Great American Eclipse. Some of them were there because I had volunteered to set up my telescope. They also had the idea I could provide some expert commentary (such as it was).
I thought I had checked things out pretty well, but this morning I found out there were a lot of things still to be resolved. First, my telescope's power transformer apparently quit working. Then I found I couldn't focus the camera through the 2 inch diagonal (which I needed for clearance to view the sun near the zenith). I mounted the camera piggyback on the telescope and spent about 5 minutes getting the sun in the field of view. Then I realized the camera and the telescope were not aligned. It was too late to start over pointing the telescope first and then adjusting the camera, so I gave up and never got to view the sun through the 8 inch Celestron with the solar filter that took about a week to put together. I output the camera video to a TV monitor, so people were able to comfortably watch the eclipse in real time in the shade of the picnic shelter.
Our son, Jon, drove up from Atlanta and brought my old 5 inch Celestron and the solar filer I made for it many years ago. I set it up at a little less than 40x so people were able to clearly see the sunspots as the moon crept across the solar disk.
Joani used her old Sony camera to snap pictures of the crowd. I gave her a piece of the solar film that I used for my telescope to attach to her new Sony to capture eclipse.
When this is what I saw through my camera, I was so disappointed!
I had a special solar filter, but my camera's auto setting was not getting the job done.
David was very busy controlling all of his equipment, but he took the time to put my camera in the manual setting and work his magic. This image was a vast improvement. It was hard for some to even find the tiny dot once the solar glasses were donned.
Everyone was fascinated by all of the tiny crescent images of the partially occulted sun created by gaps between leaves that acted like pinhole cameras.
We were thrilled that our son, Jon, (far left) and daughter-in-law, Sara, (not in the picture) and very good friend, Bob, (between Jon and David) made the trek up from Georgia to spend the day with us.
The panorama below shows a lot of the neighborhood eclipse revelers and we were so happy to be welcomed as a part of their celebration.
We felt very fortunate to have such a forgiving day of weather. A cloud or two appeared now and then, but when the big moment arrived, it was clear as a bell.
I saw something new after maybe 30 minutes in the direct sunlight - a high-temperature indication on the camera video output. I had no idea what I should do about it other than to try shading the camera. The camera seemed to cool off, but the indication persisted. Fortunately, there were no ugly consequences and the video continued throughout the eclipse.
It took us all a moment to realize we should take the filters off to see the full eclipse. The street lights came on, so other than the corona we were only able to see Mercury and Venus.
This is the moment that I panicked. I had set the filter down out of reach and I couldn't find the power off fast enough.
Filter back in place, it was time to welcome the warm rays. The birds started chirping again and it was time to head inside and break bread and enjoy family and friends.
Our party wound down maybe 30 minutes before the eclipse was officially complete, but it appeared everyone thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle that totality had provided. It was truly amazing! I do wish eclipses were not quite so rare and then I might be able to do a better job of recording one. Until next time I will just enjoy the fantastic memories of the Great American Eclipse of 2017.
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