I followed the weather for the ten days before the event and saw it go from clear to partly cloudy to overcast and then back again to clear. As May 20th drew closer, the weather reports stabilized to partly cloudy in the farthest southern extreme of the band of visibility, with the weather farther north being progressively worse. A weather front was moving in and even in the far south, the evening of the 20th was expected to get worse sometime between 6pm and 8pm. The peak moment of the eclipse was to occur between 6:28pm and 6:29pm.
Had the weather been completely clear, my friend Ed was willing to fly me south to see it in his small plane. The weather made that too risky (risk of being grounded in CA for a few days, or more). So, it became a car-trip and I planned initially to go to near the center of the band at Shasta Lake, CA. The day of the trip, I ran a simulation and decided that it would be best to go farther south to have a better chance for clear weather. Ed was going to go with me, but decided that was a bit too far and decided to stay home. I ended up taking off Saturday afternoon (5/19) after reserving a motel in Ashland, OR. My plan at that time was to drive to Chico, CA the next day.
I took off from Ashland about 8am and made it to Red Bluff, CA (about 40 miles north of Chico) before lunchtime. At that point, the weather looked pretty clear, with some clouds to the northwest, where the front was approaching. I decided to get a motel there in Red Bluff and to check out the weather again on internet in addition to confirming my simulations of the eclipse. It was too early to move into the room so I took a drive out east of town looking for locations from which I could observe and image the eclipse. I ended up finding a real nice spot off a country road that would ensure me good privacy and a great view of the western horizon. I decided that, assuming the weather continued to look good, I would stay in Red Bluff for the eclipse. What I found was that Red Bluff was still looking good through 6pm and the satellite showed the clouds moving from the SW to the NW and not heading directly towards Red Bluff. The simulation suggested that I might not see a full ring at the Chico location. At 4pm, about an hour before the eclipse was to start (5:13pm), I headed out and began my setup, which utilized my Orion EON 80mm refractor and my Nikon D40 arranged for prime-focus imaging. I could not do a decent polar alignment, so just did what I could using a compass and planned to manually keep the sun centered instead of using the clock drive.
After taking a few photos to refine my focus, I took my first eclipse photo at 5:13, just as the moon became visible at the edge of the sun. I continued to photograph throughout the eclipse, taking well over 200 images until the sun descended into clouds with about 6 minutes left in the eclipse. I continued imaging through the clouds for awhile and caught some brief clearing before the sun disappeared into thicker clouds. I took the most photographs as the moon neared large sun-spots, as the trailing edge of the moon became flush with the edge of the sun, during the visibility of the ring, and as the leading edge of the moon became flush with the edge of the sun. A sampling of the images is available in this link to a Picasa web album. I've also included a couple of images below. Very few people drove by on the road while I imaged and only one, a nearby farmer and his wife, stopped to talk a bit. Their son came down on an ATV and got there just about during the peak of the eclipse. I let him look through the camera viewfinder a few times.
This turned out to be a great trip, with the weather and the images coming out about as well as I could have expected. The next time I image a solar eclipse will likely be in August 2017 when totality will pass directly over Portland, OR. By that time, I hope to have evolved my technique to the point where I do not have to play with focus as much (find optimum focus and just stick with it throughout). I also am unsure about what kind of exposure times will be required during totality. In this case, I used my Nikon D40 instead of my Starlight Express, because it gives me capability to go to shorter exposure times. What I would like to do on the total eclipse is to be at the location the night before to get polar alignment, so that I can utilize tracking during the eclipse. I would then be able to do all of my imaging through the computer, making it easier to fine tune the focus (using sub-frames and seeing the results near 'real-time' as I do the focusing). I would like to use the Starlight Xpress camera then because the computer control seems more robust and the down-load times are MUCH better than the D40.
The next big event of this season occurs June 5th as Venus moves across the sun, an event that will next occur in the year 2117 (so I better catch this one!). In preparation for this event, I've ordered a solar filter for my 8" Celestron SCT and plan to try using eyepiece projection to get higher magnification views. I have also ordered an adapter that will allow me to try this through the 80mm refractor. The transit will begin just after 2pm and continue through sunset (have to be farther west to see the whole thing). I'm back to tracking the weather reports and expect that I'll be heading east of the Cascades to image this. Before that day I hope to try out eye-piece projection in the backyard and finalize my methodology. Stay tuned!
The "Ring of Fire"
Last view of full sun before the clouds won.
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