Annular Eclipse of October 2005

Hi all

I am hoping to travel to the annular eclipse of October 3 and to record it, but I have not yet gotten at all into astrophotography. It seems to me that in an annular eclipse, there would be two iterations of Bailey's Beads, at the equivalents of second and third contact. Direct observation or a direct shot of these would be dangerous because of light coming from the contrary limb of the sun. Can we devise a way to place a mask over half of the solar image?

With this mask over the left limb of the sun, I could start a digital video camera going just as the equivalent of second contact is made, thus permitting a video record of the beads, and turn it off as the moon's disc slips inside the sun's. If I could then flip the mask around, I could repeat the process at the equivalent of third contact.

I presume this mask would have to be at the focal point. Would this not expose the telescope to excess light and heat? Would small amounts of stray unfiltered sunlight destroy the video camera or the telescope?

Can anyone guide me in this process? I have a lovely TeleVue 85 refractor to bring along but would be willing to buy a shorter, wider angle, cheaper telescope to use for this project.

I also intend to put a video camera on a Coronado PST and to record the whole event in H-alpha.

Robert Howe
WIlbraham MA

Robert,

If you have never seen an eclipse, the most important rule about photographing it is to not worry about photographing it.

An annular is not as exciting as a total--but it still will be spectacular. And you do not want your photography to get in the way of your enjoyment.

So----start right now taking pictures of the sun with all your imaging arsenal, and start looking at all the other eclipse images you can find. You will be surprised in your own efforts with the scale of what you get in the finder.

One of the problems with total eclipses is that you have to do much of it with filtered sunlight, and then unfilter it, and then refilter it. You have to know what you are doing there--because everything happnes quickly. Similar problem with annular---depending on how close they are to total.

And then you have the travel problem......Just what equipment do you want to take. The imaging tube is probably the easy choice. It is a lot harder to carry mounts than tubes to the far corners of the world.

Alex