Since I had just used the SeeStar my amazing co-workers gave me as a retirement gift to make a video of the preceding total solar eclipse, I thought it would be fun to make a video of the matching lunar eclipse.
Solar eclipses have a paired lunar eclipse either two weeks before or two weeks after the solar eclipse (or sometimes both!). The two week timing is because solar eclipses happen when the Moon is new and lunar eclipses happen when the Moon is full. They occur together because the Moon’s orbit around the Earth is tilted relative to the Earth’s orbit around the sun, so the three bodies only “line up” when the Moon’s orbit crosses the Earth’s orbit, which happens twice a year. There is a band of time around the time the Moon’s orbit crosses the Earth’s orbit where the three bodies come close enough to lining up that eclipses occur. Depending on the timing of the crossing relative to the phase of the Moon, the lunar eclipse can be before the solar eclipse, after the solar eclipse, or both.
Developing clouds were predicted for the eclipse period, but the sky started out clear, and I was able to set up my SeeStar and get it focused on the Moon. I started making a time lapse video and went back inside. During the time lapse, several clouds drifted in front of the Moon; I cut those frames from the video. When the max eclipse was about to occur, I went outside to have another look. As I’ve seen before, the dynamic range of a camera does not match the dynamic range of the amazing human eye. So the tiny sliver of sunlit Moon was visible in the images, but the remaining red Moon was not. I adjusted the SeeStar exposure to try to better expose the darker part of the Moon. As part of that, I tried to refocus the SeeStar, which was a mistake because I don’t think the focus was as good. And at one point – oops – I way overexposed it. Then the clouds rolled in, so I packed up the SeeStar and brought it back inside.
Near maximum eclipse, I texted several friends to make sure that they also got to go out and see it – living up to my motto “Find Wonder and Share It!”
I really enjoy sharing cool astronomical events with friends and family, and I was very happy to share the recent total solar eclipse with my husband, my son, my daughter in law, her mother and brother, and her brother’s friends.
We watched the eclipse from the Autopia event at the Aerodromo de Siguenza outside of Siguenza, Spain, so there were other folks around as well.
We had been concerned about the potential for traffic between Madrid, where we were staying, and the eclipse site, so we got to Siguenza several hours early. It was very hot, but the Autopia team gave us cold water on the way in to the site and had lots of drinks, and there were areas to sit in the shade under the trees beside the runway. We had a great time hanging out, chatting, and playing games. It was definitely more enjoyable to hang out with a group while we waited!
When it was time for the eclipse, I set up my SeeStar and GoPro in the line of photographers. We had brought beach chairs for the group to sit on.
We had brought a colander from our Air B&B to use as a set of pinholes to project the partially eclipsed sun onto a surface. It took some adjustment to get it the right distance from the surface to have a good pinhole effect, but the experiment was successful and fun to show to other people.
I had brought eclipse glasses, and the event also provided some, so we had plenty. It is truly cool to see the Moon start to move in front of the sun, and we had fun naming what the different shapes look like – cookie bite mode, banana mode, fingernail mode, fin mode. It was interesting to hear what names the other people in the group came up with. I had noticed in previous solar eclipses that it hits a point where you really feel like you can see the Moon as a sphere, and I had that sense again here.
As totality neared, and it got darker and darker, it was fun to comment on what we were seeing. When totality occurred, it was wonderful to express and hear others express amazement – seeing Venus, seeing the sun’s corona, seeing a pink prominence.
My personal motto is “Find Wonder and Share It.” This was definitely a shared wonder day.
And it was definitely a better experience for being shared.
Now that I’ve processed data from four different devices from the total solar eclipse, here are my lessons learned:
SeeStar:
– For air travel to see an eclipse, I would absolutely take the SeeStar again; it worked great as a travel telescope.
– I was too conservative on when to take the solar filter off the SeeStar; I should have taken the solar filter off a little earlier to get the diamond ring/Bailey’s beads effects going into totality.
– While it worked well to use time lapse mode with 2 second intervals approaching/after totality, I should have switched to video mode to get more frames per second just before/during/just after totality. Or just used video for the whole thing, assuming there is enough memory space on the SeeStar.
– I should have adjusted the exposure differently for totality. Looking at the images in PixInsight, I can see that the bright spots are overexposed, so the prominences lost their hot pink color.
– There might be a way I could have programmed the timing of all that in advance so that all I had to do on the day was remove/attach the solar filter at the right times; I plan on investigating that before we do this again.
GoPro:
– I would absolutely take the GoPro again; it worked great to capture the wide field.
– I would set up the GoPro and be aware of where it was so I didn’t end up standing in front of it.
– I would have set the exposure to be brighter so that during totality the view was a little brighter.
Panasonic LUMIX and 12-60 mm lens:
– I would absolutely limit my lens choice again, and I would again choose the wide angle lens and let the SeeStar/telescope capture the close up view.
iPhone:
– As I did this time, I would limit my use of the iPhone to panoramic views.
Like almost everyone, I carry a cell phone everywhere, and I also used it to try to capture the eclipse.
I had a cell phone eclipse filter that came with the eclipse glasses, but I couldn’t really get it to work.
My favorite kind of cell phone photography is the pano shot, rotating myself around to get an extremely wide angle view. I think the iPhone excels at that. I took a pano shot showing the row of photographers to either side of me just before totality.
I took a pano shot during totality that also shows Venus above and to the left of the eclipsed sun.
I also took some pictures of the setting sun. The pictures I got from the Panasonic LUMIX camera were better, but these were not bad.
What an amazing experience! Pictures from four different cameras, all of them interesting in their own way, but none better than being there in person.
I had deliberately limited myself to a single, wide-angle 12 – 60 mm lens for my travel camera, a Panasonic LUMIX DC-GX9. I didn’t want to waste time swapping lenses during totality, and my goal, like with the GoPro, was to capture the wider field, trusting the SeeStar to capture the eclipsed sun itself.
Nevertheless, the first temptation was to image the eclipsed sun. And, unlike the SeeStar, the image wasn’t saturated, so the hot pink solar prominence on the left side of the sun showed as hot pink, although with a 60 mm lens, there wasn’t a lot of detail.
Then I followed my plan and took pictures of the eclipsed sun with the landscape. I took some with the 12-60 mm lens set at 24 mm, capturing Venus as well as the eclipsed sun in one of them. Venus was about 50% illuminated, so it was a half-moon shape, although again with this lens there was not a lot of detail.
I also took some pictures with the 12 – 60 mm lens set at 60 mm. Venus was out of the frame for this one.
As the Moon moved away from blocking the sun, I stopped taking pictures … until sunset, when the sun was clearly a crescent and then a fin as it set behind the mountains.
What an amazing sight.
Which view do you like the best?
Camera geek info:
Panasonic LUMIX DMC-GF7 set at f/5.6, 15 second exposure, ISO 1600
LUMIX G VARIO F3.5-5.6/12 – 60
Corona image: 60 mm, ISO 200, f6.3, 1/40 sec exposure
Widefield image: 24 mm, ISO 3200, f8, 1/40 sec exposure
Widefield image with Venus: 24 mm, ISO 200, f6.3, 1/40 sec exposure
Normal image: 60 mm, ISO 3200, f8, 1/13 sec exposure
Sunset images: 60 mm, ISO 200, f14, 1/50 sec exposure
One of the things I wanted to capture with the total solar eclipse was the wide field experience of the sky getting darker and darker and then the weird alien sky with a black circle surrounded by a white glow (potentially with hot pink prominences) and the sunset colors on either side. And, for this particular eclipse, also the crescent sunset.
I have a GoPro camera, so I decided to bring it and attach it to the tripod I had my SeeStar on and capture just the period around totality and the sunset. I set it in auto mode for shutter, white balance, and ISO because I anticipated a pretty large dynamic range for how much light there was.
Unfortunately, some idiot (pointing fingers at my own head here) stood in front of the GoPro in order to remove and install the solar filter on the SeeStar. So I didn’t get a video of the whole event because my own hands, back, cell phone, and camera were in the way. Lessons learned: set up the cameras so managing one won’t block another.
However, I was able to extract video of entering totality and exiting totality. I also got video of the sunset, but the view was too wide and the sun too bright to really see the crescent shape. The pictures I got with my Panasonic LUMIX camera were better, which I’ll share in a future blog post.
I was also able to extract images from the video of the diamond ring on both sides of totality as well as totality itself.
Even though it isn’t 100% what I was after, it’s still pretty amazing. (And I used other cameras as well, which will get their own blog posts.)
When I retired, my amazing co-workers gave me a SeeStar S30 smart telescope as a retirement gift. I was already planning on going to Spain to see the 2026 total solar eclipse, and I had been agonizing over what gear to take, trying to balance between what would produce the best result vs how much gear I was willing to transport on an airplane. I decided the SeeStar was the perfect solution – I could transport it in my backpack, with a tripod in my suitcase.
Based on previous eclipse experiences, I wanted to be flexible on the day in case we had to avoid clouds or wildfires. So we had our base station in Madrid and planned on driving in the best direction on the day. When it looked like we would have clear conditions over the whole region north of Madrid, I found the Autopia group was having an event at the Aerodromo de Siguenza with paella, drinks, bathrooms, music, and a bunch of really cool cars, and I signed up.
We got to the site several hours early to avoid the predicted eclipse traffic and sat under the trees in the shade (it was hot!) and ate and checked out the cool cars and watched a green airplane flying over the runway. My husband, son, and I walked up to the end of the runway for the view over to Siguenza in the valley. There was a good horizon towards the direction the eclipse would be, and the sky was clear! I was very excited that it looked like perfect eclipse weather!
Around 7 PM, I walked up to the end of the runway with my gear and started setting up. I set up the SeeStar first. My husband had 3D printed me an extra piece to cover the wide-angle camera so it wouldn’t be pointed at the sun the whole time. I put that on with the wide-angle cover not covering the camera, put the solar filter on, and found the sun. Then I rotated the cover so it protected the wide-angle camera. It was a little windy, so I shortened the tripod to make it more stable, found the sun again, and started recording just before first contact at 7:35:38 PM, using time lapse mode and a picture every 2 seconds. (I had other cameras I used as well; they’ll get their own blog posts.). I could see several sun spots.
My group – my husband, my son and daughter-in-law, my daughter-in-law’s mother and brother, and her brother’s two friends – came to join me. We named the different modes of the eclipse – cookie bite mode, banana mode, fingernail mode. As totality approached, it got darker and darker. I was conservative on when I took the solar filter off the SeeStar after totality at 8:30:14 PM.
Totality was amazing. A truly alien sky for a minute and 38 seconds. Naked eye you could see the pink prominence to the left of the sun. I have more pictures from other cameras, but I also tried to spend some time just experiencing the weird sky.
When the moon moved away from blocking the sun, I put the solar filter back on the SeeStar. Coming out of totality does not feel as amazing as going in, but this eclipse occurred just before sunset, so as the sun set, it was still a crescent. The sun set behind a mountain with cell towers on it, and it ended up in fin mode as only the top part of the crescent was visible.
We stayed at the site for a while, back under the trees, listening to the music, hoping to experience less traffic driving back to Madrid. We didn’t miss all the traffic, and we got back to the Madrid parking garage around 1 AM.
I made a (time lapse) movie to try to capture the 2024 total solar eclipse we experienced in Granbury, Texas.
The movie doesn’t capture the planning and replanning needed to capture this event. Months ago, looking at the predicted weather, the weather across most of Texas was expected to be favorable for viewing the eclipse. I chose to stay in Temple, Texas which was within the band of totality, not too far from the centerline, and had a reasonably priced place for my husband, daughter, and I to stay. It turned out to be a great place to stay – we could pick up our daughter from an airport in Dallas and travel to Austin to see the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (which given the combination of the weekend, eclipse tourists, and peak wildflower season was quite crowded). Even along the side of the road, the bluebonnets were plentiful, so I got my iconic Texas bluebonnet picture on this eclipse trip.
By the night before the eclipse, it was clear that Temple was going to have a lot of cloud cover for eclipse day. We were rained on (twice) the last time we tried to see a total solar eclipse, and we did not want to repeat that experience! So I used the Astropheric app on my phone (with four different cloud cover models) to look south to Austin/San Antonio (did not look promising) and north to Dallas/Fort Worth (looked better), and I settled on going to Hillsboro, Texas (which had temporarily re-named itself Eclipseboro), which was an easy drive up I35 and right on the centerline.
But Monday morning when I got up, the cloud odds were not looking good for Hillsboro either. So I looked at the options again and decided to trade time in totality for better cloud odds and decided to drive northwest to Granbury, Texas. We picked up breakfast and started driving.
Some had predicted massive traffic, difficulty getting gas, and difficulty getting food. There were even road signs to warn of the upcoming traffic.
We didn’t experience any of that. No traffic, no difficulty getting gas, no difficulty getting food. And, best of all, we drove out from under the heavy clouds and saw the sun shining in a blue sky with white puffy clouds.
We decided to view the eclipse from Hewlett Park. A group from New Mexico State University were set up there, doing an experiment with weather balloons. They allowed us to set up at the periphery of their launch area. I got my telescope set up well in advance of the eclipse start, so I was able to capture a time lapse of the entire thing.
I was able to see sunspots and use them to focus my telescope. A few minutes before the eclipse, I started my intervalometer to capture a picture a minute.
Once the time lapse started, we had some clouds pass in front of the sun, which was worrisome. But I had noticed in Astropheric that pretty much every prediction had shown fewer clouds during the actual eclipse. And a book I had bought on this trip, Totality: The Great North American Eclipse of 2024, by Mark LIttmann and Fred Espenak explained why. The Sun heats the Earth and pulls water from lakes and plants into the sky, where it cools and forms clouds. But when the Moon starts to block the Sun, this heating process stops, water stops being pulled up, and the clouds dissipate. This effect won’t help with the heavy cloud cover of a front, but does eliminate fluffy white clouds. And we saw the clouds dissipate and the sky grow clearer.
We also saw the folks from New Mexico State University release their weather balloons.
We walked around looking for cool crescent shadows, but didn’t spot any. Nor did we spot any changes in color.
But we did see it get really dark. The sign on the hotel across the street came on as did the streetlights.
I had wanted to take some wide angle pictures with my smaller camera, but I did not get it set up in time. When we reached totality, I decided not to mess with it and just enjoy the experience and take pictures with my telescope.
It was the weirdest alien sky I have ever seen. It was dark. But there was this elliptical bright white glowing spot in the sky, with a perfect black circle in the middle. I could see the two brightest planets – Venus and Jupiter – on either side. It. Was. Awesome.
I took the solar filter off my telescope, reaimed the solar tracking mount (either it lost track or I bumped it in my excitement), and manually took pictures.
I looked for the comet, but did not spot it.
I alternated between taking pictures and looking at the sky.
One of the things that I could see naked eye was a bright pink spot on the lower edge of the Moon. I thought maybe it was the diamond ring effect, but it lasted for too long. Later I found out it was a solar prominence. Amazing!
I saw the edge getting brighter and took a set of pictures to try to capture Bailey’s beads and the diamond ring effect – I got the diamond ring for sure.
When the picture got super bright, I put the solar filter back on the telescope and returned to letting it take a picture a minute.
By now the clouds were gone, and we laid on our picnic blanket with our solar glasses and watched the Sun come back out.
We watched until the Sun had fully emerged from behind the Moon.
Friends, before this eclipse, I said that I would rather photograph an annular eclipse because it was a more exciting subject. I. Was. Wrong. There is nothing like a total solar eclipse.
And so I’m left asking: When can I see this again?
Stay tuned!!
Camera geek info for solar pictures:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode, 1/200 second exposure, ISO 100
Intervalometer
Williams Optics Zenith Star 73 III APO telescope
Williams Optics Flat 73A
Thousand Oaks optical solar filter
Sky-Watcher SolarQuest HelioFind tracking mount and tripod
Camera geek info for corona pictures:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode, 1/200 second exposure, ISO 100
Williams Optics Zenith Star 73 III APO telescope
Williams Optics Flat 73A
Sky-Watcher SolarQuest HelioFind tracking mount and tripod
One of the things that surprised and amazed me during totality of the solar eclipse was a bright pink spot on the lower edge of the Moon that I could see naked eye. At first, I thought maybe it was the diamond ring effect, but it was not – it was a solar prominence! And when I looked at my pictures, I discovered that it was one of several.
Solar prominences are loops of plasma that are anchored to the sun’s surface and extend out into the sun’s corona, following the local magnetic field. The plasma is made of electrically charged hydrogen and helium. Hot hydrogen emits red light, which is why they appear pink.
Since we are close to the maximum of the solar sunspot cycle (solar max is expected to occur within the next year), there happened to be a lot of prominences for this eclipse. So cool!
These pictures show the solar prominences during totality and the diamond ring effect where the sun emerges at the end of totality.
Camera geek info for corona pictures:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode, 1/200 second exposure, ISO 100
Intervalometer
Williams Optics Zenith Star 73 III APO telescope
Williams Optics Flat 73A
Sky-Watcher SolarQuest HelioFind tracking mount and tripod
Last night was the “Super Blood Wolf Moon” total lunar eclipse, so named because the Moon is currently closer to the Earth (super), it was a total eclipse (blood), in January (wolf). By the way, my favorite full moon name is “Worm Moon” in March. I think that would make a great story title.
We just had a cold front come through, so it was cold, but perfectly clear. This was definitely the best and longest lunar eclipse I have ever seen, and the delightful enthusiasm from my young neighbors across the street added to my enjoyment.
I considered trying to use my intervalometer to make a detailed time lapse, but I knew I’d want to play around with camera settings too much. So I used a sequence of shots to make a time lapse slideshow.
The full Moon is basically lit like daylight.
Camera geek info:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/5.6, 1/800 second exposure, ISO 100
Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 300 mm, manual focus
Tripod
Cable release
When the Moon was mostly eclipsed, it started to turn red. I could either set the camera to get the detail of the lit side (and lose all the part in shadow), or set it for the shadow. I thought the shadow picture was more interesting.
Camera geek info:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/5.6, 1 second exposure, ISO 100
Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 300 mm, manual focus
Tripod
Cable release
When the Moon was fully eclipsed, it was dark red. The camera picked up more color with a longer time exposure. It was harder to focus, though, since the Moon was so dim.
Camera geek info:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/5.6, 2 second exposure, ISO 100
Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 300 mm, manual focus
Tripod
Cable release
When the Moon was coming out of the eclipse, dew had started to settle on the camera lens, so I got an interesting effect before I went inside to warm up my cold camera. And myself.
Camera geek info:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/5.6, 1 second exposure, ISO 100
Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 300 mm, manual focus
