My Eclipse

[JamesF]

by JamesF, age 48 and a bit...

Last night's mile in the swimming pool having taken its toll, I finally managed to drag myself out of bed at 7:30 this morning.  Grey and dull.  The weather wasn't great either.  The occasional treetop poking through the fog was the only evidence that the entire property hadn't been beamed up by aliens in the middle of the night.

The cloud thinned a little after 8am and when I was feeding the chickens and letting them out of their houses for the day it reached the point where i was occasionally able to make out the Moon nibbling a first little piece out of the solar disc.  A quick look through my solar film filter held up to the Sun suggested that something might be recoverable from the situation, so I abandoned plans for imaging, stuffed a couple of Naglers in my pocket, took the ST120 outdoors and put in my new (to me) Lunt wedge for it's first proper session since I bought it.  With the 20mm Nagler the view was very sweet.  I've been very happy with the solar film, but the wedge just took things up another level.  Certainly some of the improvement was due to having the astigmatism in my right eye corrected for the first time ever, but even without glasses the view was very impressive.  The very cold air may also have helped.  The image was certainly very steady.  The Moon's eastern limb was rapidly approaching a sunspot which I could make out in beautiful detail, particularly the penumbra.  As it moved towards the maximum of about 85% I could make out far more surface granulation and faculae than I've ever managed before.  I could also make out the jagged silhouettes of what I assumed to be craters on the Moon's limb against the Sun.

Nothing exciting happened.  It didn't go dark.  The birds didn't stop singing.  No peasants arrived with torches and pitchforks to break down the doors.  Fifteen percent of the Sun is still very bright indeed.  Even the clouds regularly drifting across the view did little more than scatter the shadows.

As I'd missed first contact I was determined to watch until the end.  There wasn't too much to see on the part of the disc that had been covered when I got the scope out other than one very small sunspot, but the cloud was thinning more and the view continued to improve all the time.  I attempted to experiment with a 13mm Nagler when the first spot I'd seen was revealed by the receding limb of the Moon, but sadly discovered that I was a bit short of inwards focuser travel.  A higher magnification view would have been nice to try to tease out a bit more detail, but actually the 20mm framed the Sun very neatly so I don't feel too distressed about that.  It may be that a 2" barlow lies in my future.

I continued to watch right up until the eastern limb of the Sun was clear as a hard line unbroken by the Moon, eventually packing up with the cloud still darkening the sky but having failed to spoil the party.

I saw the 1999 eclipse from a window on the sixth floor of Nomura Bank in the City.  It was so cloudy that even in the fleeting moments when it was possible to make out the Sun the view was very poor.  As this is the last one I'm likely to see without having to arrange a holiday around it I'm very pleased that despite initially looking like a non-event it actually turned out rather well.

James

[Pig]

Very enjoyable read indeed James  The wedge is definitely a step up from the film and I m sure when summer comes you will tease out the excellent detail found with the sunspots and their surroundings.

[David Smith]

Glad to hear you got to see some of the show James.

I'm very tempted by a wedge but saving for CaK so must resist.