Author Topic: The 2017 solar eclipse (from Hackensack)  (Read 3151 times)

Offline BLeafe

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The 2017 solar eclipse (from Hackensack)
« on: August 21, 2017, 07:00:03 PM »
Well, as you can see from the first picture, I was loaded for bear, but I had a really bad feeling about my chances of success (and the DirecTV dish was no help).  The sun was too high in the sky and none of my still or video cameras were capable of shooting directly into a bright sun (why don't they schedule these things closer to sunset? ;)). I suppose I could have gotten a piece of filter like my neighbors had (next three pictures) to hold in front of the camera, but I didn't. BTW, that third image was taken at exactly 2:44pm - the peak moment of whatever totality we were going to get. In that picture, the woman appears to be taking a picture of that moment through one of those filters - exactly what I should have done - so she probably got much a better shot than I could possibly get.

The fifth picture (collage) appears to offer a moment of levity. Though she very well might be doing something brilliant, it still looks like a homemade contraption that started out as a cardboard center from some elephant's roll of toilet paper. Plus, I have no idea what she's looking at. According to her shadow angle, she's not aiming toward the star of the show (and our solar system) at all.

As I expected, I was getting absolutely nowhere capturing ANYTHING that showed the eclipse. The sixth picture - taken at 2:40pm - shows how bright the mostly-covered sun was, so zooming in would produce a totally white image. HOWEVER.......this image produced lots of flare in the camera (sun-sized circles that have some red in them) AND something very odd: in the middle bottom-half of the frame, there appears to be an upside-down image of a dark moon covering a lot of a yellowish sun. Is this my money shot for today?

Turns out, it WAS.............for 11 minutes.

At 2:51pm - while I was making one last desperate attempt to blind myself to get a picture that I might never see, I noticed a small, round white circle moving across a small space between bright sections of cloud and immediately hit the shutter. I had no idea what - if anything - I had captured (it happened so fast).

So - although the sun looks a bit flat on top, I got an eclipse shot at 7 minutes past NJ's totality, thanks to the filter of a cloud.

Nothing special, but at least it's something.


Click to enlarge.





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