Pic of the Day

August 21, 2017 Total Solar Eclipse:  Hopkinsville Kentucky

15 different photos arranged to show the progression of the eclipse. The eclipse begins on the right side of the image and progresses to the left through totality and the waning partial phases.

     On August 21, 2017 my family and I were on site in Hopkinsville, Kentucky for the total solar eclipse.  This was the second total eclipse for my wife and I, and the first for my children and grandchildren.  I was fortunate to have contacted the Northwest Baptist Church a few months before the eclipse and got permission to park on their property to set up camera equipment.  The church property sets on a incline that gave a good 360º view.  It was without a doubt the best place near Hopkinsville to see the eclipse.
     I have been preparing for this eclipse most of my life.  As a young fellow I had a passion for astronomy.  I remember when I was fifteen years old and looking through a astronomy book from my high school library.  The book had a chapter on the mechanics of solar eclipses, and a chart of solar eclipses that would occur between 1950 and 2050.  At the top of the chart was a map of the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse.

Baily's Beads, August 21, 2017 Total Solar Eclipse: Hopkinsville, Kentucky

 the last hint of the photosphere as totality begins.  This phenomenon is named in honor Francis Baily who theorized that the beads seen at the beginning of a total solar eclipse was sunlight shinning through mountains on the moon, which indeed does create Baily's Beads. 

     I remember being so excited.  The path of the future total eclipse would pass only one-hundred miles north of where I lived at the time.  My mind when into overdrive.  I immediately started thinking, "I can see that one, its close to home."  I then realized that I would be sixty-two years old in 2017 and immediately thought, "I hope I live that long."  Well, as you can imagine my thoughts on age as changed drastically since that day, and yes, I did live to see the eclipse own August 21.

Inner Solar Corona:  Hopkinsville, Kentucky

Notice the solar flares at 2:00, 3:00 and 5:00 position.  Solar flares are plasma 

being ejected from the photosphere.

     No words can express the beauty and excitement of an event like a total solar eclipse, and no photograph can capture the extent of tonal ranges of the solar corona.  It is something that must be experienced in person and seen with ones on eyes.

August 21, 2017 Total Solar Eclipse,  Solar Corona:  Hopkinsville, Kentucky

The solar corona extends two to three times the diameter of the photosphere.  This image does not show the entire corona.  The latitude of the camera sensor cannot maintain a proper exposure from the inner corona to the out corona. 

     The photos here simply, do not even come close to what the eye can see in an eclipse.  The human eye can see a far greater range of values than a camera.  Some of the images here are single images, others are multiple images put together to give the viewer a more comprehensive view of what I saw with the naked eye. I can not stress enough, how captivating, and thrilling a total eclipse experience can be.  The next total solar eclipse in North America will occur on April 8th, 2024.  I am planning to there, and I hope you will do the same.

Eclipse Preparations

    I was supposed to be in Nebraska photographing sharp-tailed grouse and prairie chickens at this time but my plans have taken a sharp turn.   A month ago I injured my right knee.  Not sure how, but it started hurting March 3.  I though sure it would get better, but it did not.  Last week, right before I was to leave for Nebraska, I went to the doctor and discovered that I have 2 subtle tears in the right knee meniscus, and a sprained ligament.  The doctor says that the pain is most likely because of a sprain of the MCL (a ligament), though the torn meniscus is doing its part.

     Fortunately I am already better, and can move around fairly easily again.  So, I have been using my chicken photography time to prepare for the August 21, total solar eclipse (see my February 19 post at www.bobbyharrison.blogspot.com).  I have big plans for photographing the eclipse.  One of the problems is the sun will be at an approximately 67º above the horizon.  Most tripod heads will not permit a lens to reach that angle.  For my main camera and lens (a 500mm with 2x teleconverter) I will be using an equatorial mount as a shooting platform.  The equatorial mount will allow the lens to point in any direction.

     The photos shown here is the lens set in a wooden cradle.  I will use a vibration dampener (not completed at this date) between the camera body and base of the cradle for stability to reduce the play between the lens / teleconvert / camera connection.

     The equatorial mount also has a right ascension (RA), and  a declination drives with fine tuning adjustments.  The drive controls should help me keep the sun centered in the lens without having to touch the lens.  A right angle finder is going to be a must have, for photographing this eclipse.  I will be very difficult to see through the viewfinder without one for this eclipse.

     I took the images below today.  They illustrate the size of the sun disk on a full size sensor.  The white box around the image indicates the edge of the full frame (FX) image.  Each image is the complete sensor area.  No cropping was used to make the Sun's image look larger.  The larger solar disks was achieved by using teleconverters, a 1.4X for the second photo below and 2X for the third.

     One thing I discovered today is that I need a lot of practice to insure that all will go well during the total phase of the eclipse.  All details will have to be worked out in advance, for totality last only 2 minutes and 40 seconds where I plan to be.  That's not much time for all the images I hope to take.  Take a look at my February 19, 2017 post, I have a lot of good links there, and 2 photos I took during  1979 total solar eclipse near Winnipeg, Manitoba.

If you have not started preparing for the August 21 eclipse, START NOW!  August 21 will be here before you know it.

The August 21, 2017 Total Solar Eclipse

     I am sure that most of you know by now that a total solar eclipse will occur on August 21, 2017.  I have been looking forward to this event for more than four decades and cannot believe that the eclipse is almost upon us.  I remember as a teenager thinking, “I’ll be sixty-two years old when this eclipse occurs.  I’m going to be a really old man.  I hope I live long enough to see it.”  Well, my perception on old age as changed considerably since I was a teenager, and hopefully I will be around at least another seven months and then I will have lived long enough to see the GREAT AMERICAN ECLIPSE.

     Now, if the weather cooperates all will be just great.  I’ve been doing a lot of research over the last year on where to be.  My decision is, or was to be near Hopkinsville, Kentucky near the point of Greatest Eclipse.  However, sites are now coming online with information on cloud cover from previous years and predictions of this August 21^st cloud cover percentage.

     Though Hopkinsville is my first choice, I plan to be flexible and prepared to drive as far west as necessary, or east for that matter.   Current predictions, and satellite images from previous years indicate that the further west, the better the chances of a cloudless sky.  I am certainly keeping my options open.  Hopefully the entire continent will not be socked in with thick clouds, what a bummer that would be.

     I have only seen one total solar eclipse in my life, and that was the February 26, 1979 eclipse.  The “79” eclipse enter the US on the Washington coast, then crossed in to Canada at the North Dakota border, then onto Greenland.  I was a young man then, and my wife and I drove from Michigan, to 120 miles west of Winnipeg, Manitoba to be near the center line of totality. 

     It was a breathtaking experience!  Once the Sun’s photosphere was covered the brilliant solar corona shown bright against a starry velvet backdrop, not day nor night, but somewhere in between.  Totality only lasted a short two and half minutes or so, but it was one of the best two and half minutes I have ever experienced.  It was an event that is still vivid in my mind and one I have longed to have again. 

     Of course my goal is to photograph the August 21^st eclipse, and do it better than I did in “79.”  Back then I used a Nikon F2 camera and a Nikkor 500mm mirror lens with a homemade 2x teleconverter.  My wife and I had only been married for eight months, and we were really living on a tight budget.  I could not afford a teleconverter so I took an old, non working 35mm lens and took some of the lens elements out and placed them between a couple of extension tubes.  Much to my surprise I got something close to a 2x converter.   The photos above were taken with that setup.

     Back in those days I was shooing film and my favorite film was Kodachrome 64.  At that ISO I was shooting some pretty slow shutter speeds.  What I did was bracket exposures, starting with /12000 of a second and then shoot a photograph with every shutter speed down to 1 second.  It worked, and I got some semi-decent photos with my homemade rig.  This time I’m going after the eclipse with better equipment and higher ISO’s.

     The eclipse can be photographed with just about any camera and lens.  My preference is a 800mm to 1000mm on a full frame camera.  These focal lengths provides about a 6mm image size of the Sun and show detail in the solar corona. I do not have an 800mm so I will be using a 500mm with a 1.4 teleconverter.  The effective focal length of the 500mm with the 1.4 converter is 750mm.  To capture various aspects of the eclipse a wide range of exposures will be necessary.  Check out the exposure guide chart on this site: http://www.mreclipse.com/SEphoto/SEphoto.html

     I do hope that you plan on seeing this eclipse.  It is an astronomical spectacle that will live with you for the rest of your life.  It is a must see event.  If you are like me and are planning on photographing the eclipse, don’t forget to take a few seconds to stop and see this spectacle with you own eyes, and not through a camera lens.

     Below is a list of website that will help you if you plan on visiting a site on the path of totality and photographing the eclipse.  Though I have listed some of these sites under charts and illustrations in this post, the live links are at the bottom of this post.

My favorite site when it comes to exposure recommendations.  This is a must see site: http://www.mreclipse.com/SEphoto/SEphoto.html

This is an excellent website for exposure guide through the various stages of the eclipse.  It is a Shutter Speed Calculator for Solar Eclipses. 

http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/SolarEclipseExposure.html

Another good site with an exposure chart and good photography information:

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/ECLIPSE.HTM

If you are using a point and shoot camera visit this website:

http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/photographing.HTM

For details on the path of totality:

http://eclipsewise.com/solar/SEnews/TSE2017/TSE2017.html

For map of average cloud cover go to:  http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/weather.htm

Excellent site to see cloud cover on the eclipse path over the last several decades and the current cloud cover predictions.

http://eclipsophile.com/total-solar-eclipses/total-solar-eclipse-2017-august-21/