Solar eclipse in continental USA August 21, 2017
 

Mark your calendar! This sort of thing doesn't happen every day!

http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/maps.htm

In case anyone is interested in driving up to experience the eclipse in that zone of total black out, it appears it is becoming a real circus event. Connie is driving back from Delaware, and she called me this morning from South Carolina. She said there are signs and notices all along route 95 warning of heavy traffic congestion on Monday, August 21. I looked into getting a motel in Santee, SC a few weeks ago, and from what I could see, EVERYTHING was already booked. So I think that unless you already have made arrangements, don't even think about just driving up there for the day, parking your car along the road and watching the view.

Of course, I expect there will be vendors lining the roads too, selling T-shirts with a picture of the eclipse on them. Of course, they can't be of THIS eclipse, but heck, when did reality and the truth ever get in the way of someone trying to make a buck?

Got the tripod getup ready and mounted the camera on it. I've got two different filters, so I tried both of them. I took video with both, so maybe I will slice and dice them and show the difference. In short, one allows more light in than the other. The actual solar filter reduces the light enough where features like sunspots are plainly visible, whereas the other filter whites out entirely the entire sun. I'm really not sure which one is going to be best for the eclipse (clouds permitting). Have to think on it a bit. But one good thing I did this is that I noticed that the battery charge dropped pretty rapidly, so I'm going to have to use the AC adapter. I wouldn't want to have the battery go dead right in the middle of the eclipse. Actually I still have to worry about the camera going into thermal shut down, because this August sun is pretty darn hot, and the camera sitting out in direct sunlight before the eclipse reduces the light and head is going to get quite hot.

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/pics...filters_01.jpg

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/pics..._tripod_01.jpg

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/pics..._tripod_02.jpg

Using my Nikon P900 on the Skywatcher Allview motorized head and tripod. I've got two dark filters I wanted to experiment with to see which one I want to try for the solar eclipse on 08-21-2017. Weather permitting, of course. This time of year, afternoon thunderstorms and showers are a pretty common event here in north Florida. So deep cloud cover will pretty much kill this idea of even seeing the eclipse.

This setup is pretty stable when I only have to move the camera's position via the Allview platform. Movement if very smooth and controllable, even at high magnifications. However, touching the camera itself to adjust focus or zoom is another matter entirely. Unfortunately Nikon doesn't offer, as far as I know, and remote that can do these functions.

Anyway, note the prominent sunspots pointing right in our direction. That's all we would need is to have a humongous CME to knock us back into the stone age.

Still can't make up my mind which of the two filters I should use. And I will only have time and opportunity to use only one of the two.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTQjm1SjnOw

One good thing about trying this out now is that I figured out I really need to use the AC adapter for the camera. The battery in this thing doesn't last all that long, so I would certainly hate to have the battery go kaput right in the middle of the eclipse. As it is, I'm hoping the camera doesn't overheat with the strong August sunlight pouring right down that lens into the camera body. Unfortunately, I have no backup plan.

FYI, for anyone interested, the solar eclipse is supposed to start at 1:09 pm and end at 4:07 pm for the Tallahassee area. It should still be an interesting event here, and well worth taking time to view. Just do so safely. If you have any sort of digital camera device, use the view screen to view the sun, and don't look at the sun directly, even when the moon has covered as much of it that it can. The sunlight will still be intense enough to cause eye damage.

Well, this actually worked out. When I went out to set up the camera gear on the garage apron around 12:45, things didn't look so hot. Clouds had rolled in, and the way it looked, I thought that was going to be the story for the entire day. The first hint of the eclipse was supposed to be visible at 1:09, and at 1:10 the cloud bank stretched from one horizon to the other. I was almost going to just pack up the gear and call it a day, but decided that there really was no harm in just sitting in the lawn chair I had out with me and just wait a while. Sure enough, the skies cleared up and I rushed to get the sun centered on the camera, focused (I hope!), and video running. There were a few patches of clouds that did obscure the sun here and there. And right at 2:30 it actually started to rain. The weird thing was that the rain was coming out of nowhere. Wasn't really any clouds at all around me, so I really don't know where the raid was coming from. Probably just Murphy messing with me. But it wasn't hard and didn't last more than 10 minutes or so. I just sat it out and kept the video running.

Then around 3:30 or so, my camera died. I thought the sunlight had killed it, but fortunately it was just the battery. Apparently the Nikon P900 doesn't actually run off of the AC adapter. The adapter just applies a charge to the battery, and evidently taking video depletes the battery faster than the charger can keep a charge in the battery. I didn't remember to take out a spare battery with me, so I lost time running to the house to get a spare and load it up in the camera.

Honestly, someone walking outside around here when the moon had obscured the sun as much as it was going to would likely have never even noticed the eclipse. The sunlight did get reduced in intensity quite a bit, but no more than a high cloud might do.

BTW, when I got finished and came back into the house, I checked the weather radar and it appears that luck was really with me concerning the weather. Heavy clouds and rain to the east and west of me. And DARN lucky we didn't decide to run up to Santee, SC to try to catch the total eclipse. From what I can see of the weather radar up there, it looked like it would have been a complete waste of our time going there.

Anyway, hopefully I'll process the video real soon. I won't be able to do any timelapse, since I had to manually adjust the position of the camera with the camera mount, and timelapse would just have the sun/moon swinging all over the video. Probably enough to make people actually ill to watch it. It wasn't until the eclipse was mostly over with that I discovered what seemed to be the best way to use that Allview mount to track the sun. Oh well. Maybe in my next life I'll remember this. I don't think there are any more solar eclipses in store for me in this life.

Oh I did a screen capture of the weather radar to show how fortunate I actually turned out being today for this eclipse.

I just took a look at the still pics I took, and I think I had them in focus. At least as good as I could get them, I guess. But I did have to chuckle, as at the time that the moon covered as much of the sun as it was going to do, it looked like a big fat smile up in the sky. Kind of reminded me of the Cheshire cat in Alice and Wonderland..... :)

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/pics...se_2017_01.jpg

Nice picture

enjoyed

I put together a video from the shots I took yesterday. I used the Nikon P900, which ONLY captures video in 15 minute segments, which can be a pain to have to deal with. So I not only had to be monitoring the screen the entire time to make sure the "subject" was more or less centered on the screen, but I had to keep track of the time countdown on the camera to make sure 15 minutes hadn't elapsed and the video had stopped recording.

Had some trouble with intermittent clouds rolling in to obscure the sun/moon all throughout the eclipse, but I was able to get most of it captured on video. I actually lost about the first 45 minutes or so of the eclipse because the clouds were just too dense to even see the sun. When I finally could see a glimpse of the sun, I put the ND2000 filter on, as I thought I was going to have highly obscured views of the sun for the duration. But things started to brighten up, so I put on the real solar filter I had.

I also discovered that the AC adapter for the Nikon P900 doesn't really run the camera, it just provides a charge to the battery, but not enough to keep the battery charged while capturing video continuously. I discovered this when the camera just died without warning, and had to run back over to the house to get a spare battery. So I lost some footage then, too.

Anyway, this video is longer that I would have liked it, but not too bad considering I was taking video for about 3 hours and I actually would have liked to post all of it. I don't get to see many solar eclipses, and it's entirely possible that this will be the last (of only two) that I will ever see. But from the number of views I typically get with my YouTube videos, obviously things that interest me don't interest many other people.

Video was taken at 1080P using a Nikon P900 with a Seymour solar filter (except one section using a ND2000 filter), on a Sky-Watcher Allview motorized mount and tripod. I didn't really get the hang of the best way to do manual tracking with the mount till towards the end, but honestly, I really don't have much experience with tracking solar eclipses, so this was sort of OJT for me.



https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=km1rRjXPHMI