Solar eclipse in continental USA August 21, 2017

Using my Nikon P900 on the Skywatcher Allview motorized head and tripod. I've got two dark filters I wanted to experiment with to see which one I want to try for the solar eclipse on 08-21-2017. Weather permitting, of course. This time of year, afternoon thunderstorms and showers are a pretty common event here in north Florida. So deep cloud cover will pretty much kill this idea of even seeing the eclipse.

This setup is pretty stable when I only have to move the camera's position via the Allview platform. Movement if very smooth and controllable, even at high magnifications. However, touching the camera itself to adjust focus or zoom is another matter entirely. Unfortunately Nikon doesn't offer, as far as I know, and remote that can do these functions.

Anyway, note the prominent sunspots pointing right in our direction. That's all we would need is to have a humongous CME to knock us back into the stone age.

Still can't make up my mind which of the two filters I should use. And I will only have time and opportunity to use only one of the two.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTQjm1SjnOw

One good thing about trying this out now is that I figured out I really need to use the AC adapter for the camera. The battery in this thing doesn't last all that long, so I would certainly hate to have the battery go kaput right in the middle of the eclipse. As it is, I'm hoping the camera doesn't overheat with the strong August sunlight pouring right down that lens into the camera body. Unfortunately, I have no backup plan.

Well, at least it wasn't some fat guy mooning the sun, thank you very much.

BTW, I found out that the eclipse is going to begin at 1:09 pm and end at 4:07 pm in the Tallahassee area. I didn't realize that it would be so LONG. This poses problems since most DSLRs have a programmed limit of no more than 30 minutes for video. So not only am I going to have to be riding herd on the Allview mount to keep the sun/moon in the frame, but I also have to keep track of the runtime for the video to stop and restart it every 29 minutes or so. Guess I had better put out a lawn chair and a cooler with some drinks in it.

That is assuming that the camera doesn't overheat from being in the direct sunlight for that long. It's pretty darn hot out on the garage apron in the direct sunlight. Darn, wonder if I'm going to need some sunblock? At the very least, I had better be wearing a hat. The, uh, natural sunlight protection of my hair isn't what it used to be.

The eclipse is supposed to be something like 90 percent here, so that is good enough for me. Sure beats driving up to the area of totality, only to run into bad weather, or get crowded out to where there isn't even a good place to park and set up the camera. Which wouldn't work anyway, since I know the battery in the camera won't last for 3 hours, so I have to be able to plug into AC. I put fresh batteries in the Allview mount, so hopefully that will be OK, since movement will be pretty minimal the entire time.

But the weather forecast has changed yet again, and now they are calling for a 40 percent change of rain and thunderstorms for Monday, so it might be a washout anyway.

Wonder just how many videos of the eclipse there will be on YouTube? Might crash their servers when several million people start uploading all of them.

Supposed to be 81% here. One of my friends said they were going to record. Supposed to be partly cloudy. Around here (about 10 miles from Lake Erie) that means 10% to 90% cloudy, lol

Pretty much nothing here. Cloud cover but still some what view-able. Other than a little bit of funny darkening for about 20 min's nothing special.

Well, this actually worked out. When I went out to set up the camera gear on the garage apron around 12:45, things didn't look so hot. Clouds had rolled in, and the way it looked, I thought that was going to be the story for the entire day. The first hint of the eclipse was supposed to be visible at 1:09, and at 1:10 the cloud bank stretched from one horizon to the other. I was almost going to just pack up the gear and call it a day, but decided that there really was no harm in just sitting in the lawn chair I had out with me and just wait a while. Sure enough, the skies cleared up and I rushed to get the sun centered on the camera, focused (I hope!), and video running. There were a few patches of clouds that did obscure the sun here and there. And right at 2:30 it actually started to rain. The weird thing was that the rain was coming out of nowhere. Wasn't really any clouds at all around me, so I really don't know where the raid was coming from. Probably just Murphy messing with me. But it wasn't hard and didn't last more than 10 minutes or so. I just sat it out and kept the video running.

Then around 3:30 or so, my camera died. I thought the sunlight had killed it, but fortunately it was just the battery. Apparently the Nikon P900 doesn't actually run off of the AC adapter. The adapter just applies a charge to the battery, and evidently taking video depletes the battery faster than the charger can keep a charge in the battery. I didn't remember to take out a spare battery with me, so I lost time running to the house to get a spare and load it up in the camera.

Honestly, someone walking outside around here when the moon had obscured the sun as much as it was going to would likely have never even noticed the eclipse. The sunlight did get reduced in intensity quite a bit, but no more than a high cloud might do.

BTW, when I got finished and came back into the house, I checked the weather radar and it appears that luck was really with me concerning the weather. Heavy clouds and rain to the east and west of me. And DARN lucky we didn't decide to run up to Santee, SC to try to catch the total eclipse. From what I can see of the weather radar up there, it looked like it would have been a complete waste of our time going there.

Anyway, hopefully I'll process the video real soon. I won't be able to do any timelapse, since I had to manually adjust the position of the camera with the camera mount, and timelapse would just have the sun/moon swinging all over the video. Probably enough to make people actually ill to watch it. It wasn't until the eclipse was mostly over with that I discovered what seemed to be the best way to use that Allview mount to track the sun. Oh well. Maybe in my next life I'll remember this. I don't think there are any more solar eclipses in store for me in this life.

Oh I did a screen capture of the weather radar to show how fortunate I actually turned out being today for this eclipse.

I just took a look at the still pics I took, and I think I had them in focus. At least as good as I could get them, I guess. But I did have to chuckle, as at the time that the moon covered as much of the sun as it was going to do, it looked like a big fat smile up in the sky. Kind of reminded me of the Cheshire cat in Alice and Wonderland.....

Nice shot, Rich! Almost a mirror of what I saw up my way

I put together a video from the shots I took yesterday. I used the Nikon P900, which ONLY captures video in 15 minute segments, which can be a pain to have to deal with. So I not only had to be monitoring the screen the entire time to make sure the "subject" was more or less centered on the screen, but I had to keep track of the time countdown on the camera to make sure 15 minutes hadn't elapsed and the video had stopped recording.

Had some trouble with intermittent clouds rolling in to obscure the sun/moon all throughout the eclipse, but I was able to get most of it captured on video. I actually lost about the first 45 minutes or so of the eclipse because the clouds were just too dense to even see the sun. When I finally could see a glimpse of the sun, I put the ND2000 filter on, as I thought I was going to have highly obscured views of the sun for the duration. But things started to brighten up, so I put on the real solar filter I had.

I also discovered that the AC adapter for the Nikon P900 doesn't really run the camera, it just provides a charge to the battery, but not enough to keep the battery charged while capturing video continuously. I discovered this when the camera just died without warning, and had to run back over to the house to get a spare battery. So I lost some footage then, too.

Anyway, this video is longer that I would have liked it, but not too bad considering I was taking video for about 3 hours and I actually would have liked to post all of it. I don't get to see many solar eclipses, and it's entirely possible that this will be the last (of only two) that I will ever see. But from the number of views I typically get with my YouTube videos, obviously things that interest me don't interest many other people.

Video was taken at 1080P using a Nikon P900 with a Seymour solar filter (except one section using a ND2000 filter), on a Sky-Watcher Allview motorized mount and tripod. I didn't really get the hang of the best way to do manual tracking with the mount till towards the end, but honestly, I really don't have much experience with tracking solar eclipses, so this was sort of OJT for me.



https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=km1rRjXPHMI