[AZ-Observing] Re: Solar Eclipse video
- From: "Rotramel, Rick (AZ77)" <rick.rotramel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 25 May 2012 21:46:08 +0000
Howard,
Great stuff!
Hey, I saw the Channel 10 News report that night during the 9:00 PM newscast, I
think, that reported from that location in Gilbert.
Needless to say, they only showed one scope, a Dobson with a filter on the
front of it, and only showed it very briefly. The reporter-ette talked about
the long lines of people waiting to take a peek into a telescope. And they
showed video of all the long lines.
I kept waiting for them to show some more telescopes and astronomers...but no
dice. How typical of the news media as far as science goes. Oh well.
As for my story, I stayed home during the event and watched through my Dobson
Sidewalk Astronomer Solar Telescope, I think a 4" with a glass filter on the
front of it, that I had purchased at the Swap Meet at RTMC a few years back.
The image in the scope makes the sun look yellow. Anyhow, it was very cool
watching the moon occult the solar sun spots. I got my grand kids to look
through and they thought it was neat.
Later when the sun was about to set, I noticed the little projections of the
eclipsed Sun from going through a tree onto the wall of the house. Pretty cool.
I then went into the house and grabbed the camera and a zoom lens and hand held
it for a couple of shots as it set over the roof of the house across the
street. They came out pretty good. Needless to say that was the total extent of
doing any photography. I totally forgot about using the solar sunglasses for
the 1x experience, as Tom P. mentioned in an earlier post here. Although I did
do a lot of very brief glancing naked eye at the sun to see if I could make out
the moon covering the sun.
A question to Tom P:
What's the "in" joke about Lynn B. watching the entire event on SkySafari?
Rick R.
SAC
-----Original Message-----
From: az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Howard Anderson
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 9:39 AM
To: EVACONLINE; az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Solar Eclipse video ha
Hi,
First of all, well done to Steve Rector. I really enjoyed your video...
I also did a video but with much less resolution. I used an
ETX-90 scope to project onto paper that I mounted in a little
sheet metal device I created (actually left-over roof flashing!)
I mounted a small webcam near the eyepiece so that it could
create video of the image on the paper. Passers-by could look
at the paper and see the projected image of the sun. Got a lot
of good comments.
I used HandyAvi to do time-lapse imaging at one frame every 10 seconds.
The link to see the video as well as the crowd at GRCO is here:
http://www.astroshow.com/Eclipse/Gilbert2011/GilbertEclipse.html
I handed off my Nikon camera to someone (don't know who) to take pictures
of the crowd. My little telescope was set up in polar mode but not
well-aligned.
I used a compass to point it north and hoped it was level and set it for
33 degrees Dec.
So I was totally busy using the hand-control to keep the sun's image
centered on
the paper and did not have time to roam about taking pictures. Thank you to
whoever took the pictures!
I am going to use this same setup to photograph the Venus transit. With
luck I will get the scope aligned the night before... :-)
I had to register the images by hand using the Process->Align... Overlay
mode of Maxim DL. Labor-intensive to register 600 frames! Did eliminate
most of the bouncing around of the sun's image in the final video
through this
means. Could not do auto-align of the images because the "center" of the
sun moves about as the shadow covers it...
Thanks,
Howard
http://www.astroshow.com
http://www.azcendant.com
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