by conemmil » Wed Nov 06, 2013 9:47 am
This year's total solar eclipse was both unique cause it was a Hybrid/Total one and difficult to go to since shadow would hit land very close to the equator in Africa. I choose to go to Gabon, because the duration there would be the biggest possible for an observing place on land with 62secs of totality. Weather prospects weren't so favorable, as this time of the year, the rain season starts for this area. The days before totality was mostly covered with clouds but on the Eclipse day, we had rain in the morning and then sky started to clear from the clouds. Ten minutes after the first contact, sky turned to crystal clear blue without a hint of cloud!
The fact that Lunar disk was just big enough to cover the Sun, gave us a very interesting show of the Baileys Beads and some good detail on the Lunar limb in which mountains and valleys can be seen. In the images I send, I've made a composite of two exposures taken at exactly the second and third contact, that shows the chromosphere as a red ring followed by photosphere beads. The totality images is one exposure at maximum eclipse that shows the view of the corona as we saw it with naked eye. Since the Sun's activity is almost on maximum now, corona has many interesting features and is quite dynamic. I also made a flash spectrum that saws the elements found on the chromosphere.
The images were made with a Takahashi FSQ106N telescope and a Nikon D7100 DSLR camera on an equatorial mount.
The flash spectrum image was made with a Canon 5D Mark 1 and Canon 200mm f/4 lens with a diffraction grating at 200lines/mm
All cameras were computer controlled with Solar Eclipse Maestro software
Never forget the shadow!
Constantine Emmanouilidi
- Attachments
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- Flash spectrum before second contact
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- Composite of the Chromosphere in C2 and C3 with Baileys Beads
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- Single image from Maximum eclipse
This year's total solar eclipse was both unique cause it was a Hybrid/Total one and difficult to go to since shadow would hit land very close to the equator in Africa. I choose to go to Gabon, because the duration there would be the biggest possible for an observing place on land with 62secs of totality. Weather prospects weren't so favorable, as this time of the year, the rain season starts for this area. The days before totality was mostly covered with clouds but on the Eclipse day, we had rain in the morning and then sky started to clear from the clouds. Ten minutes after the first contact, sky turned to crystal clear blue without a hint of cloud!
The fact that Lunar disk was just big enough to cover the Sun, gave us a very interesting show of the Baileys Beads and some good detail on the Lunar limb in which mountains and valleys can be seen. In the images I send, I've made a composite of two exposures taken at exactly the second and third contact, that shows the chromosphere as a red ring followed by photosphere beads. The totality images is one exposure at maximum eclipse that shows the view of the corona as we saw it with naked eye. Since the Sun's activity is almost on maximum now, corona has many interesting features and is quite dynamic. I also made a flash spectrum that saws the elements found on the chromosphere.
The images were made with a Takahashi FSQ106N telescope and a Nikon D7100 DSLR camera on an equatorial mount.
The flash spectrum image was made with a Canon 5D Mark 1 and Canon 200mm f/4 lens with a diffraction grating at 200lines/mm
All cameras were computer controlled with Solar Eclipse Maestro software
Never forget the shadow!
Constantine Emmanouilidi