October 14th Annular Eclipse as Viewed From Dallas

Did you get a chance to see the eclipse yesterday? Even though it was only a partial eclipse for us here in Dallas, Texas, it was still spectacular!

As lots of folks at the State Fair of Texas found, it's pretty amazing how easy it is to see what's going on (watching with appropriate eye protection, of course). Given that it isn't safe to look directly at the Sun and we may only even try during an eclipse, it's easy to forget that the Sun is about the same size in the sky as the Moon. That, of course, is why a total solar eclipse like the one next April is even possible. But it also means that putting on a pair of eclipse glasses and looking up yesterday during the eclipse, the piece of the Sun blocked out by the Moon was clearly obvious even without magnification. What about the view through a telescope? 

Here is a view from about an hour into the eclipse taken with my equipment which has an effective focal length of 714mm, resulting in a 12.38X view. At this level of magnification, besides the impact of the Moon being in the way you can also make out some of the many active sunspots. Click on the image to see full-size.

Seeing a point in time view of the eclipse is great but to show the changes over the course of the full eclipse, I put together this view containing a subset of all the images I shot to create the eclipse timelapse of my earlier post. These are each about a half-hour apart. 

When you click on this image to see it full-size, you'll also see another version labeled with the times throughout the eclipse when these were taken. 

A Solar Eclipse at the State Fair of Texas

While my equipment at home was running on automatic, capturing images for a timelapse of the solar eclipse today (see my last post), we were at Fair Park in Dallas for the State Fair of Texas. Our granddaughter, Harper, was showing one of her rabbits in the stock show. Rabbits have been her first breed to manage and show since joining FFA but this was our first opportunity to see Harper showing her bunnies. 

If you know anything about showing at a stock show, it's a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. It turned out that judging for Harper's group wasn't until late afternoon. With all that time free, I wandered around the fair grounds checking out the eclipse and checking out people checking out the eclipse. Thanks to groups like the Texas Astronomical Society of Dallas handing out eclipse glasses for free, lots of folks were watching it. And doing so safely!

Of course, it wouldn't have been a trip to the fair without having a Fletcher's corny dog and a funnel cake! Have you been to the fair, yet? There's still time!

Here are views from the day. As always, click on an image to see full-size. Enjoy!

Folks being safe watching the eclipse with
appropriate eye protection. 

Big Tex holding up the Sun

Big Tex and the solar eclipse viewed through
eclipse glasses

Crescent shadows from tree leaves adorn a
Fair Park coupon booth during mid-eclipse

Congrats to Harper and Coconut!

October 14th, 2023 Annular Eclipse Timelapse

 

Unable to make it to a spot on the path of the annular eclipse today to view the Ring of Fire, I captured this timelapse of the partial eclipse view from my backyard. 

What's great about successfully capturing this eclipse that I wasn't even home! Since our granddaughter Harper was showing her rabbit at the State Fair of Texas stock show today, I had the equipment set up to run automatically. Months of preparation and practice paid off! BTW, more to come on the State Fair....

The shadows on the first few seconds are power lines which appear to move across the face of the Sun but it's the Sun's apparent motion across the sky, tracked by the telescope/camera, that accounts for the motion. 

This view was captured with a special solar filter, a Baader solar film filter. Without it, pointing my telescope and camera at the Sun would have damaged my equipment. 

As we are approaching "solar maximum", the Sun is pretty active so there are plenty of Sunspots across the face of the Sun right now. 

Here's what I used to create this timelapse. I set the internal intervalometer on the D750 to take shots every 30 seconds at 1/1000th shutter speed from just before till just after the eclipse, about 380 shots in all. Just to be sure I didn't have to worry about batteries in the camera and tracker lasting long enough, I ran everything off an external power pack stored under the tripod. You can see the equipment in action in my post on eclipse preparations. 

Equipment

Sky Watcher EvoStar 72ED Refractor

Sky Watcher 0.85 Flattener/Reducer

Sigma 2X Teleconverter

DeepSkyDad AF3 Autofocuser

Baader Solar Film Filter

Nikon D750 DSLR

Sky Watcher Star Adventurer 2 Tracker

Radian Carbon Fiber Tripod

Processed on Mac OS with 

Adobe Lightroom Classic

LRTimelapse

DaVinci Resolve

Music

"Eclipse"

by 1st Contact

Shared under Creative Commons License

Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/1st-contact/single/eclipse/

Preparations for the Annular, er, Partial Solar Eclipse!

Tomorrow's the day! As mentioned in my last post, tomorrow an annular solar eclipse is visible across a stretch of the western half of the North American continent. 

For the rest of the country - including Dallas where I live - we won't get to see the Ring of Fire but we'll still get to observe a partial solar eclipse. 

Screen shot from Stellarium

Here is what the Sun will look like at maximum eclipse for Dallas (about 11:52am local time). Although that area blocked by the Moon in this simulation looks blue, keep in mind that this is a new moon which means we don't see any illuminated lunar surface since the Moon is in between us and the Sun. 

While you would think that with this much of the Sun covered up the amount of light we see would be low enough to be safe to view without eye protection, it's not! Except during the totality phase of a total solar eclipse when the Moon is completely blocking the solar surface, it is not safe to look directly at the Sun. If you are interested in seeing the eclipse tomorrow, only do so if you have a set of solar eclipse viewing glasses from a reputable source. If you don't already have eclipse glasses it may be too late to get some but here is information from NASA on safe viewing resources. 

Personally, I am treating this eclipse as a trial run for the total solar eclipse that will pass over North Texas on April 8, 2024. I plan to capture the partial eclipse from start to finish using my Nikon D750 and EvoStar 72ED refractor telescope with solar filter mounted on my Star Adventurer tracker. I'll leave it running from well before the eclipse through past the end of the eclipse, capturing a couple of shots a minute. Hopefully, the result will be a handful of good shots of different stages of the eclipse and possibly a sequence of shots I can use to make a timelapse video of the eclipse from start to finish. 

A lot has to happen for this to be successful - a good polar alignment of the telescope the night before, being able to get a good focus of the Sun once it peeks above the trees, the weather forecast being accurate (i.e., no clouds) - but even if it doesn't work out as planned, it will still be good practice for April!

Here are shots of my equipment set up for a test run today. 

That solar filter is critical for
safely photographing the Sun!

The tracker keeps the telescope pointed
at the Sun as it moves across the sky.

I hope you get to see the eclipse, too. Just be sure to be safe when viewing the Sun!