Solar Eclipse, Swanton, VT, 4/8/24

[OlDoinyo]

Seven years ago, I attempted to photograph the 2017 solar eclipse in Tennessee in ultraviolet, but the attempt misfired when the lens went out of focus at the wrong moment. Determined to do better, I packed some photo gear and headed up to Franklin County Airport in northern Vermont in hopes of getting decent weather (forecasts ended up being all over the place until the last minute this time around, and choosing where to go became very tricky.) The kind people at Border Air at the airport did yeoman service rounding up local volunteers, setting up observation areas and directing an absurd number of incoming aircraft and ensuring everything went smoothly; I am grateful for their efforts. Several of those who attended the fly-in brought elaborate telescope gear; one man had four cases of equipment. The atmosphere was generally festive.

 

The weather in the end was passable but not ideal, as a thin cirrostratus deck overspread the sky and the eclipse had to be viewed through this, though the sky had been clear a scant few hours earlier. Some effects such as shadow bands ended up not being visible. It was, however,  dramatic watching the umbra race toward us across the cloud layer at 4,276 km/h, like a great dark hood cast across the sky. Totality lasted 3 minutes and 31 seconds and I managed to fire off about seven frames using the Sony A900, the Makowski 500mm mirror optic, and the Baader U2 filter. Perhaps the best of my exposures appears below. Exposure was 2 seconds at f/16 and ISO 800 and display intent is BGR.

 

 

 

I had thought of using the Novoflex 600 rather than the Makowski, but the challenge of blind-focusing such a lens quickly and dealing with the focus shift of a refractive optic made the idea seem impractical.

 

While not what I might have wished, the sharpness is arguably much better than that of my 2017 attempt, as I made sure to focus as best I could at the last possible moment. The actual shapes of the solar prominences can be made out. The triangular prominence at 7 o'clock was intensely bright in both UV and visible, and easily visible to the naked eye as a red dot (unlike the 2017 prominences.) The smearing of color near the prominence is probably due to the cloud layer. The false color of the prominences is likely due to calcium emission in the UV. The corona is more irregular in shape than in 2017, due to higher solar activity this time around. Very little of the corona's filamentous microstructure is evident; one suspects that this effect is more apparent in the visible spectrum.

 

An attempt at a UV diamond ring shot was spoiled when the tripod was evidently bumped:

 

Oh, well...

[Stefano]

So cool. I never saw a total solar eclipse, the next one visible from Italy will occur on August 2, 2027 (total only from Lampedusa, Sicily), and the one after that will be on September 3, 2081. I will have to travel to see one (although partial eclipses are much more common).

 

Your BGR image looks very similar to how the eclipse looked in visible light. The Sun prominences look red probably because of the Hα line, and as you said they look red in your image because the calcium lines look blue after a white balance, which then becomes red after a channel swap. Nice coincidence.

[colinbm]

Wow these are great.
I saw a total eclipse in Australia a number of years ago, I loved all the little crescent suns on the ground from the tree & scrubs shadows.

[Fandyus]

Might be one of the only images of its kind. Congratulations on being the one to take it.

[Nate]

Nice job! I got to see the 2017 one, just had to travel 4hrs South in Idaho. I didn't have any cameras at the time, but did enjoy the visuals.

[Andrea B.]

WOW !!!!!

That is sooooo cool !!!!

Thank you for sharing this.

 

I took the liberty of bolding the gear used to make the photo. Hope that's OK.

 

Your UV image shows much more of the solar flares (...not sure what they are called....) than any of the totality images we saw on TV during the eclipse. I am wondering if that is because it is a UV image?

We were not in an area of totality here in Santa Fe. So after the eclipse had peaked, we went indoors to watch it travel across the country via CNN's coverage. 

[Doug A]

Spectacular images @OlDoinyo! Love seeing the diamond ring in UV. You did quite well with a very difficult situation. Thin clouds don't seem to be too big a bother. Fgured clouds would wipe out UV. Amazing results.

 

I considered trying UV, but too many factors worked against me. I didn't get any prep time to experiment. It was cloudy all four days leading up to the eclipse. Eclipse day cleared off, except some intermittent thin clouds. For UV the Takumar 500 would have been the choice. It catches wind like a sail and there were 15mph + gusts. No way I could get away with 2 second exposures. Interesting exposure comparison, I got F11, ISO 200 at 1/400 second. This was using the Pentax 645Z with Pentax 400 and 1.4 teleconverter. There's a lot less UV light.

 

I was so glad dad (87) got to photograph with me. He has always wanted a nice shot of the total eclipse and he got it. With Olympus E620 and Sigma 50-200 zoom. 

Thanks for sharing,

Doug A

[dabateman]

This is amazing great capture. 

[Bill De Jager]

I also failed in my effort to get closeups of the 2017 U.S. eclipse due to an equipment failure.  Then, my attempt to get matching IR, vis, and UV photos of the corona failed due to operator error.  Plus, I left the hood on my zoom fisheye lens after setting it to circular, which meant the hood spoiled the perimeter of that shot.  The shadow bands were a no-show as per my high-speed video of a white sheet. Sigh... at least I had the good sense to get a good long view of the eclipse with my own eyes rather than panicking over photographic mishaps.

 

We need to have regular monthly total solar eclipses, so we can get in a lot of good practice time and refine our methods to get reliable results (weather permitting).  ;-)

[Kai]

Great project! Very impressive result!
Thanks for sharing ;)