Speaking of time machines, it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything. Almost two years, in fact. Time to correct that.
Since I mentioned I wasn’t really planning on taking photographs of the 2017 Great North American Eclipse, it was happenstance that I managed to capture some really good snaps through the camera that I did set up. It was placed on a tripod with a tracking mount, set to follow the sun, and take automatic exposures every 5 minutes during the partial phases and then every 5 seconds during totality.
In case you were wondering, these were shot on a Canon EOS Rebel XSi / 450D DSL with a 70-210mm/f4 lens aimed at the brightest thing in the sky with automatic exposure. None of the usual rigamarole with regards to perfect pictures here. Just “point and shoot” and hope for the best.
Here’s what I got, purely by chance, with some slight contrast stretching and color correction (since it was behind a Baader AstroSolar ND5 solar filter). You’ll notice at between 2-3 o’clock (if the Sun were a clock face) that there is a slight prominence taking palce. Another one is visible at about 4-5 o’clock. Not great pictures of the prominences, but a pretty good picture of totality.
Next up was the diamond ring as the Moon moved away from the Sun’s face and the skies started brightening again. Another picture that I wasn’t really expecting to get, but was pretty happy with the luck I had. The blue streak is an internal lens aberration and is not an alien Astropotamus.
More eclipse pictures will follow. Hopefully it won’t be two years. I did capture the entire partial phases before and after, as well as some pretty badly exposed pictures of totality that I just haven’t processed yet. I saw these two and just stopped there.