July 30, 2008 www.spaceweather.com supplied the following information:
This Friday, August 1st, millions of people in China will witness a well-publicized total eclipse of the sun. Less widely reported, however, is the partial eclipse, which billions of people across three continents can observe and enjoy.
I did not go to China but witnessed the eclipse from my observatory in The Netherlands.
I was lucky and had only a few passing clouds, so I was able to capture almost the whole sequence: at maximum a fat cloud eclipsed the eclipse alas.
Here is the setup I used: note the Sun-and-Moon looking down from the opened roof of my observatory.
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Coronado PST with Televue 2.5 Powermate and Vesta SC3 b/w raw webcam mounted on double piggy back platform ; William Optics Zenithstar 80 ED II APO with standard ToUcam Webcam operating with 0.6 Mogg Focal reducer and a stacked Baader Infra Red Blocking Filter/Baader Contrast Booster combo [to get the whole Sun in my FOV] and this whole assembly piggybacked on my Meade LX200 mounted on a wedge and pier. |
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Same setup as above, but from a different angle, with the double piggy back platform very well visible. |
The following black/white images were all captured with my William Optics Zenithstar 80 ED II APO with standard ToUcam Webcam operating with 0.6 Mogg Focal reducer
and a stacked Baader Infra Red Blocking Filter/Baader Contrast Booster combo [to get the whole Sun in my FOV]
Meade LX200 with piggyback rail.
And a simple home made Baader Solar Filter
Here are the individual images (each of them can be clicked to view the larger image), but I also made an ASTROSHOW of this partial eclipse, so that you can browse through the individual images.
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Based on the above images I have made the following anmiation:
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August 1, 2008 08:39 - 10:14 UT. This animation was made from individual images which were loaded into K3CCDTools and then exported as a GIF file. Click the thumbnail version to view the full size animation (file size 4.6 Mb) |
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August 1, 2008 08:47 UT. NOT the ISS, but a bird transiting the eclipsed sun ... Click the thumbnail version to view the full size animation (file size 475 Kb) |
Here is the Ha image I captured with my Coronado PST setup [see above for details] 5 minutes after 'le moment supreme' ...
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August 1, 2008 09:32 UT. Imaging: Coronado PST piggybacked on LX200 with Televue Powermate 2.5x and Philips Vesta SC3a B/W webcam, Baader Infrared Blocking Filter. |
Imaging the b/w images:
William Optics Zenithstar 80 ED II APO with standard ToUcam Webcam operating with 0.6 Mogg Focal reducer and a stacked Baader Infra Red Blocking Filter/Baader Contrast Booster stacked combo [stacked: to put the 0.6FR at the proper distance from the ToUcam CCD in order to get the whole Sun in my FOV]
43 AVI's [30 seconds @ 10 fps] were captured with the help of the Interval Timer of K3CCDTools:
Camera settings:
During imaging I used the reticles of K3CCDTools to verify that the sun remained nicely centred in the image during the whole imaging session.
Postprocessing of the b/w images:
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