So as not to bury the real story: after a week of most the U.S. worrying about the weather, the great Eclipse of 2024 ended up being great where I happened to be:
People who live in my part of North America have been blessed with the opportunity to see not one but two total solar eclipses in the last few years. Before 2017, and more than 40 years into my life as a telescope dork I had never managed to see one of these because it never seemed worth it to travel to far away places to get the view. But in 2017 we only had to travel a bit to the West, so we went to Columbia, Missouri to get some BBQ and the experience.
On that August afternoon the clouds held off and stayed high and thin enough that we managed to see the disk of the moon completely cover the disk of the sun. As day turned to night in the middle of the day all the local wild life, including the humans at the University of Missouri in Columbia, went all crazy with amazement and confusion at the surreal scene in front of us. If you have not managed to see this one of these events, it’s totally worth it to seek it out. You will never see anything quite like it. Partials are not even close to the same because if even the smallest sliver of the sun is still uncovered, it’s still basically day time. In totality it’s night time during the day, which is an experience that is just indescribable.
The one thing I did not do on that day is work hard on the photographic end of the experience. I knew that really doing well would require a lot of technical know-how that I had not had time to practice. So I noodled around and got some middling shots with my hand held too-short telephoto.
It was fine, but I never really managed to nail the focus, and the framing was very inconsistent and random. I knew if I ever got another shot at it I’d want to at least set up a tripod and a somewhat longer lens and get thus do better with some of the details.
Happily another shot has come, as the second totality event in seven years traveled over Ohio and Northern PA. So this time we packed up a tripod and a new telephoto lens and drove to Cleveland to see if the clouds would again be kind to us. But, I also did some prep:
Ever since 2017 I had set up a reminder in my calendar to buy some higher quality solar filters from Thousand Oaks Optical. They sell those nice filters that give the disk of the sun that orange color balance that you are used to seeing in solar photos. They have all kinds of sizes and form factors, and in 2017 I waited until way too late to get anything in time. So this time I ordered four or five months ahead of time.
I got a longer lens. To get the disk of the sun to a good size you want a lens that has a field of view equivalent to the longest long lenses you can buy for 35mm cameras. 600-800mm is the base value to start with. Twice that would be better if you have a sturdy enough mount.
I did some lens and tripod practice. Pointing the giant lens at the sun and keeping it pointed turns out to be tedious and annoying. If I ever do this again I’m getting a tripod head that will easily pan in just the X-Y directions. Ballheads are a bit too hard here because they move in all directions at once. So I mostly used the panning base of the ballhead to do fine adjustments and track the sun. My buddy used a gimbal head and that seemed easier. Of course the best solution is to get at tracking mount and then have the camera just shoot away automatically on its own. But that’s a lot more size and weight.
My original plan was to put a 2x teleconverter on the long lens to get that longer focal length. But when I tried this configuration I found it hard to get sharp pictures in my back yard. 1600mm equivalent is just really hard to deal with. If I were to do that again I’d get a telescope-style mount for the camera instead of using a plain tripod. So I compromised a bit on image size and took the teleconverter off, which ended up being a good choice. Modern digital cameras of even moderate resolution, like my little 4/3rds bodies have enough pixels to give you a lot of leeway to crop.
Here is a shot with the converter, cropped square.
Here is comparable shot without it. It’s just a bit more crisp, and all of the camera handling is much easier.
Yeah the sun is a bit smaller, but still a good size with just a moderate crop.
So anyway, we picked a random hotel just outside Cleveland to stay the night before. Then in another stroke of great fortune we found a small but wonderful nature park nearby where we could hang out and see if the clouds would again be kind to us.
I set up about an hour before the event started to make sure I remembered how to do everything, and took some pictures from around the park.
And of the very start of the event, and the partial phases
As time went on we started to have some cloud anxiety:
But just like in 2017 we had great luck. We had some clouds, but they were thin and high. At prime time we could still see the great show.
Here’s my favorite shot from this year:
The tripod and focus practice paid off. Nice crisp focus, and great details along the very edge of the sun’s surface. I have no complaints. I probably could have kept better track of time. And I could not figure out how to make my camera auto-bracket when the self timer is on. I guess I’ll try and work on those issues next time, if there is a next time.
As a bonus a few of our local friends who were driving around looking for sky were able to drop in on the spot we found at random. So we got to hang with them too while the whole thing went down. A great time was had by all.
You can see all the rest of the best pictures I got in this flickr album.