A Crowning Achievement

NASA tweeted a link to an article today that takes a look at how scientists fared in predicting in advance how the Sun's corona would appear during the Great American Eclipse this summer using data from NASA resources. The corona (Latin for crown) is the star of the show, the ethereal white light that emerges round an occulted Sun. This super-hot atmosphere of our nearest star is dynamic, being shaped and sculpted by the strong magnetic fields emitted by the Sun.

Scientists used magnetic field information from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory to arrive at the prediction. It was far from a trivial model - the "simulation required thousands of processers and took about two days of real time to complete"!

Below was the best guess by Predictive Science, Inc. Below that is my image of the corona, a combined shot using HDR software to bring out the full details. If we rotate the prediction counter-clockwise a bit it really does give a pretty good outline of the shape we saw on August 21st - well done folks!

M13 - Globular Cluster in Hercules

If you say "globular" then odds are 99/100 that the first thing that will pop to mind for an amateur astronomer is Messier 13, a.k.a. the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules. Accessible from spring until fall and riding high in the summer sky it is a grand object. Sir Edmond Halley (of comet fame) was the first to note it as a naked eye object under dark skies. While I think I've seen it without optical aid once or twice it has been an averted vision thing at best.

The least bit of optical assistance, however, does make it quite apparent. One of my fondest memories is seeing it through Charles Cyrus' 10" reflector one evening at a Baltimore Astronomical Society gathering. I had always found hints of resolution in my 6" from Towson, but that evening at the Irvine Center, away from serious light pollution, it burst forth like a jewel, countless stars elbowing each other for attention. It was stunning.

As part of my project of tackling the Urban List with my 80mm Vixen scope from my home, M13 is one of the required stops. It's always an easy star hop (well, provided you don't struggle with locating the keystone) as the two 7th magnitude "sentinel" stars are easy to locate in the spotter scope. And even with such a simple boost to eyesight one can see a fuzzy something between them.

In the scope it's a round puff of smoke, fairly uniform in brightness compared to larger aperture that reveals the steady brightening to a core. With averted vision and higher magnification on a moonless night I can almost swear it just begins to resolve slightly, a few stars dancing just outside of plain view.

For the last several weeks I have been attempting to image the cluster using my Canon t3i and the Vixen scope. The first few attempts gave less than desired outcome. Either the focus was not sharp enough or there were too many shots where there was some trailing of stars due to alignment or camera shutter vibration. But finally this week I managed to acquire about 45 minutes of 30 second images that stacked and produced the photo below. Not bad, it even shows tiny galaxy NGC 6207 (mag 11.5) in the upper left hand side. What amazing technology we have today.

Full Tilt Saturn

Like Earth, Saturn has a tilt to its axis. Ours is 23.5 degrees whereas Saturn is a tad more at 26.7 degrees. The outcome is that as Saturn orbits the Sun we get differing views of the rings. When it is Spring or Fall equinox on Saturn we see the rings edge on. During a solstice they are tilted as fully as possible to us.

Currently Saturn's northern hemisphere is just past solstice and we are enjoying the rings in all their splendor. There is probably no other object in the heavens that is so consistently awe inspiring. While not a large instrument my 6" reflector is more than up to the task of showing some subtle banding on the planet, the gap in the rings (Cassini's division) and some shadow play of the rings upon the planet.

August 9, 2017 at 10:00 p.m. EDT

First Cut - Images of Solar Eclipse 2017

I'm like a kid on Christmas morning - I have over 150 images of the eclipse to play with, probably half of those taken during totality. It should keep me entertained for many cloudy evenings!

I spent part of my rest day at Scottsbluff looking over the treasure trove and played with some to place on Facebook and to send off to S&T. Once I get with my friend Steve Stewart (who is a digital photo pro in my humble opinion) I should have more great pics to display here. I am especially eager to work with him to generate an HDR of totality given I have some bracketed shots of the corona. The challenge with digital editing in my opinion is to enhance the shot without straying into fiction. Right now the Internet is awash in fanciful renditions of the eclipse with golden Diamond Rings and red hot prominences. And that's OK so long as you let people know it's an artistic creation - otherwise you set people up chasing unicorns at the 2024 eclipse.

So - without further ado - first takes of the Great American Eclipse!

The Sun is reduced to a thin crescent as we count down to second contact. Some sunspots are visible near the 8 o'clock position

The gorgeous Diamond Ring emerges as the Sun struggles to shine its light in the face of the advancing lunar limb

Totality! The corona splendor on full display

Third Contact - the Moon slips off the face of the Sun in this shot. Prominences and Bailey's Beads are highlights to the view.

Success!

Praise be to God - I have been able to witness the Great American Eclipse of 2017 from the Guernsey State Park in Wyoming! It was an incredible experience under nearly perfect conditions. I'll edit this entry or post supplements later when time permits to detail the entire, fabulous experience!

Anticipation

Well we are down to less than a week now until the "Great American Eclipse" happens. Lot of planning has gone into this one - from scouting venue and getting a room reservation 18 months in advance to reading lots of articles. Even some dry runs due to all the technical tools and software I'm going to try to use in order to both view the eclipse as well as photograph it.

At first I was not sure that driving to Nebraska was the very best decision, but given the tools I'm wanting to take it has been making more sense as the weeks unfolded. And of course seeing things like Hertz cancelling people's car reservations and screwing their plans also validates my desire for control!

I continue to pray for good weather - it started off looking iffy 10 days out but it seems to be slowly improving. I'm sure if it is a matter of a couple hundred miles shift I'll be up for that on eclipse day but really hoping Nebraska comes through as a clear sky venue so I can relax and enjoy the event. If it works out it will have been 47 years, 5 months, and 14 days between my first eclipse in 1970 and this pan-American event!