| Annular Solar Eclipse occurred on October 3rd in 2005 across Iberian Peninsular
and Northern Africa. I am going to upload the report of the trip and the eclipse but I have to apologize for the delay with the reasons as follows: |
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| Excuse 1: I recorded it almost fully from the start to the end but the
data is too much for my computer and the overload is almost breaking it. Excuse 2: The edited files are too heavy for my server. I am looking for a good blog sight. Excuse 3: I do not like my irritating video image recorded without equatorial mount. Excuse 4: The movies are boring without sound but finding good free music is another heavy work. Excuse 5: In order to compensate my vacation of nearly three weeks, I have to work extremely hard. Excuse 6: I travelled Europe after the eclipse and this topic was already over when I came back home. |
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| And so I am still fighting with these big files and images that often keep me away from net surfing and mail exchanges. Before starting my report, I would like to give my special thanks to these people; my host mother and father? or sister and brother, Maria Jesus and Peter, for their warm hospitality, our leader of S33, Luis Arguelles, for his preparation and accommodation of this meeting for us, all the participants of the S33 meeting 2005 for being so friendly and giving me precious time, a friend of mine, Kazu, for recommending me to join S33. |
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| Well, annular eclipse is often said to be just nothing, compared with total eclipse. It must be true for those who experienced total one and as far as it is seen through ordinary filter. But for me, the first time to see either kind of eclipse, it was an absolutely exciting experience. Especially when it was seen through H-alpha filter, lots of prominences that we could not see before the eclipse became able to see. The numbers of prominences surely increased along with the progress of occultation and at the peak of the eclipse, dozens of prominences, big and small, were surrounding the red ring. That was an impressive and unforgettable sight for me. I saw some H-alpha photos used Coronado PST in Madrid, but I feel we could see much more with our own eyes. Perhaps many small ones are too faint to be photographed. I think we were lucky to be able to observe with our eyes. Besides we can get great H-alpha photos by John. |
Equipment
(Some shots were taken on the day before)
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| John has a good Coronado H-alpha filter | Bob's Swarovski fieldscope | Pepe's 4inch refractor on his handmade tripod | My? equipment |
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| Richard's PST amazed us later | Soligor 400mm lens? (+ solar filter + contrast booster filter) | Peter looking at the sun with Tim's scope. |
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| Pepe makes anything. His wooden tripod is beautiful. All the accessories fit in his handmade case. | |||
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| Some lucky guests of the hotel could enjoy too. | Bob and John having the final check | John trying to take picture through PST. (I tried too but failed) |
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| It was a gorgeous day ! | Peter is looking at my camera Luis is taking us and I'm taking both. |
There you are, Paolo! |
| It was a perfect sunny day for the eclipse. The weather welcomed us warmly
and the sun was smiling to us. We took off our jackets that had kept us
warm in the chilly morning. To my regret, as it is mentioned on excuse 3, I did not bring any equatorial mounts because they are too heavy for me to carry all the way from Japan to Europe, not only Spain but Switzerland and Germany. I took only camera tripod and slight movement mount with me. I picked up some stones and put them in the sack under the mount to fix (anchor) the tripod. It looked still unstable. Pepe brought his firm tripod for me. He was always kind and nice. I put my video camera on his tripod. Everyone(?) else had a practice on the previous day but I skipped the trial to save the power of battery. I bought the camera just before leaving Japan and was not used to handling it. I looked into the manual but I did not know how long the batteries would really keep. Luis was using video too and he suggested me to record intermittently. I tried to follow his advice first but soon I gave up counting the interval and decided to keep recording continuously. I had three batteries so I thought to continue until one would be over. Since Pepe lent me a tripod, I could set my digital camera on my tripod. I had only 28mm wide angled lens at hand. I cut Baader Solar Film and attached to the lens with scotch tape. As I got ready to take some shots, Pepe kindly offered his 300mm lens with Nikon mount. Wow! He has everything. And his offer was so attractive that I was at a loss whether to change or not. But I reconciled myself, thinking my tripod was not strong and also imagining multiple-exposure-like shot (not real but composite). Anyway, the moon was moving. Right after the occultation started, a small plane passed across the white sun. It was just like an opening show of celebrating the eclipse. I could record it fortunately.(See movie2) I usually use equatorial mount at home in Japan when I take photos. I often walk around and talk with friends, leaving my camera. But this time I had to check the monitor and move the sun all the time, which often slipped my mind. Sometimes I was too late to be back and the sun was gone out of the monitor. Next time when I see an eclipse, I should bring a portable eqtrl. mount.. Though I was busy checking two cameras like that, I enjoyed the eclipse entirely. Particularly, the observation of H-alpha sun was fascinating and fabulous. When we were planning about the meeting on our mailing list, PST was on sale in Japan. It was 50% off. I thought getting one but Richard declared to bring one and I thought I did not need any more. But as we saw the fantastic sun, I became to want one. At 10:52, three minutes before the second contact, Richard shouted that there appeared the prominence on the other side (hidden side) and John said 'Yeah!' looking at his monitor. How cool! Richard let me look in the scope. Yes. There I could see the head of the big prominence from the dark rim of the moon. Wow wow wow! It wowed us! The second and the third contacts were the most thrilling moments. Just before the second contact, the two thin arms grew rapidly and connect to make a beautiful arch. At the third contact, breaking up did not always start from the center of the thin arch. It was a great chance to see Baily's beads. And I thought I could see it but it may be denied. The resolution of the uploaded movie below is too low and bad-qualified to insist they are Baily beads. The moon slid on the white sun so smoothly. Although we had about 4minutes from second to third contact, the time passed like a second (I mean a moment). It was in the morning and without eclipse it would have become warmer as the sun went up like the previous day which was rather hot than warm. But it became colder and colder as the sun got occulted and we put our jackets on. According to the check by Luis, the temperature dropped 5 degrees (C). I felt how great the sun was. I cannot explain the atmosphere accurately. It became dark but not like cloudy, sunset or evening darkness. It was strange and peculiar. I have too little vocabulary to express exactly. And the sun came out again peacefully. |
