| Description | I spent the weekend in Tupper Lake, NY as a volunteer at Totality in Tupper, a celebration organized by the Adirondack Sky Center. Sunday and Eclipse-Monday, a group of about a dozen of us set up solar telescopes, and assisted members of the public to look through them. I had my Askar V set up with the 80mm objective (360mm native focal length) a 2" 40mm eyepiece, and a Baader white solar filter. The viewing was awesome and people LOVED looking through the scope. The public viewing shut down just after 2 PM at First Contact, and we were then on our own and invited guests... my wife had been a volunteer as a greeter on the shuttle bus, and was able to join me. I was very happy looking through my scope (staying in the moment) rather that dealing with the complexity of imaging. I loosened the safety straps on the telescope's solar filter and removed it as soon as totality happened. I was surprised how bright the corona was both with the naked eye and especially through the eyepiece, where I could see two very red prominences right next to each other at about "5:30". The corona itself was brilliant white, and looked like a Celtic cross with extra bright bars vertically and horizontally against the corona's circular background. This image was taken with my iPhone during totality. You'll note Saturn (upper left) and Venus (lower right) are visible. You can see the "Celtic Cross" in the iPhone photo but it was even more pronounced through the eyepiece). It was almost painful to view through the eyepiece, similar to viewing the moon without a moon filter. But just stunning. I had bought that eyepiece in a moment of weakness before I started doing EAA and hadn't used it at all in about 18 months; but it was a pleasure both for the public doing solar viewing and for me during the eclipse. I've thought about selling it, but am now glad I haven't. The field of view took in the entire corona and the detail was spectacular. |
