In a rare break from what I normally write about …
The video shows the annular eclipse on Saturday and our "ad astra per aspera" experience with clouds. We came very close to not seeing any part of the eclipse.
My brother, Bill, organized the "Kansas Annular Eclipse Group" of about a dozen to view the eclipse from Camp Riverview in Texas. Most in the group had past or present connections to Wamego.
Bill developed his "Solar HQ" as the command center for this event (and for the total eclipse next April). Bill monitored weather and showed educational simulations to interested campers before the eclipse. During the eclipse he showed video to the public and captured images to study.
My setup was more basic.
Luckily the sun was visible for several minutes about two hours before the eclipse started. That allowed me to configure and align my telescope to track the sun regardless of whether it was blocked by clouds.
For about six minutes around annularity I recorded 4K video at 30 frames/second. Most of the rest of the time when the sun was visible I recorded lower-resolution video at 10 frames/second so files would not be so large.
“Annularity” is when the sun was as a “ring of fire” around the nearly black moon.
In over 4 minutes of annularity at Camp Riverview, TX we saw perhaps 30 seconds of the eclipse through sometimes heavy clouds. The image at right below was very risky (to the electronics) taken with only the clouds as a filter. My camera survived.
We were joined at Camp Riverview by Greg Redfern, a NASA JPL Solar System Ambassador. Redfern gave interesting evening talks before and after the eclipse:
Our Star, The Sun
The Sky is Falling: Space Rocks and You
We’re hoping for better weather next April for the total solar eclipse visible from the same Texas site.
