There is going to be an annular solar eclipse on May 20th that will be visible in a narrow pathway that covers part of Eastern Asia and the Western United States. The eclipse will be seen as a partial eclipse over a much greater region of the World. I live in Redding, California, which luckily happens to be right in the center of the path, giving a perfect ring of fire effect during the peak of the eclipse.
Because of this, I decided I had to buy a solar telescope and produce a time-lapse video of the eclipse. It's taken me a few days to figure out how to take decent pictures with it, but here is my first decent picture. In it you can see the very large sunspot that has been talked about in the news the last couple of days. Click on the image to enlarge.
If you want to download this picture in full resolution or in a number of resolutions appropriate for wallpapers on various devices, including iPhones, iPods, etc., you can visit the astrophotography page on my photography website.
For those who wish to know more of the technical details, the telescope is a Meade Coronado SolarMax II 60 Double Stack with a 400mm focal length. I used a Barlow lens to extend that focal length to 800mm so it would take up most of the frame on my Panasonic GH2.
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6 Comments
I've replaced the image I originally posted up with a better processed image. Processing these has a pretty steep learning curve
I can't wait to see what you show us! Living right in the path should be spectacular. I'm thinking about driving up north just to watch, just because the next annular or total won't be hitting the Los Angeles area anytime soon. But is the gas-to-awesomeness ratio worth it? Hmm.
Your round trip would be about 1000 miles so "only" about 200 dollars. I'd do it...but then again I'm flying to Hawaii to be able to see the entire transit of venus instead of just the first part. :)
I'm coming up to photograph it myself. I'm staying in Shasta and wondering where to set up to capture it. Where are you setting up yourself to capture it and where around Shasta recommend? Good luck bro! That is a fantastic shot of the sun.
PS, I have red that the sun filter needs to be completely removed during full eclipse and am planning on following that advice, are you planning to do the same?
*-where around Shasta *would* you recommend?
I'm actually going to be at my house in Redding unless it looks like there are going to be clouds towards the western mountains...if there is then I'm going to head east a bit towards Lassen. Anywhere should work nice. I'm not going to be able to capture anything other than the sun so background doesn't matter to me. :) As to removing the filter, I'm not going to but that is for two reasons. One is that there isn't going to be a total eclipse. 4% of the sun is still going to be visible. Another is that my setup doesn't really even allow that. You'll have a few minutes to decide if you need to remove the filter as it gets closer to the peak of the eclipse.
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