Annular Eclipse

I interrupt the Alaska trip photos with a few photos from the annular solar eclipse Saturday. I posted these (and a few more) on Facebook yesterday but a lot of the people on this e-mail don't have FB (one of the reasons I use e-mail). Donnice and I travelled to Robstown, a bit west of Corpus Christi so we could see the full eclipse. We also used the opportunity to make a visit from an open invitation by a young family to see their place they are working so hard to make a dream a reality. The temperatures were great but the clouds posed a bit of a problem. Fortunately, the heavy clouds in the morning became more wispy with a few breaks into clear sky. After a tour of their land, I pull out my camera only to realize I failed to bring an adapter for my zoom lens - one really dumb mistake. I had a more general purpose lens on the camera so I used it the best I could. What I missed by not using my preferred lens is additional details around the edges that I really wanted to explore. Everybody says the photos look great and they are better than I thought possible at the time. However, they are so heavily cropped that they are only attractive in social media type platforms. They would never work as a print on a wall. Given the dumb mistake 200 miles from home, I'm happy to have what I have. With a total eclipse in 2024, I will not make that mistake a second time!

The eclipse started about 10:30, peaked at 11:58, and then ended about 1:40. I had planned to take a more complete set of photos for the duration but lost interest in that task with the lens mistake. We focused on the better task of enjoying time with our friends with an occasional photo. The first two photos below were taken at the peak of the eclipse. The first photo was taken without a solar filter on the camera using the darkest settings available on the camera. The photo shows the clouds causing a bit of grief. Only after getting home and editing the photos did I realize that the clouds actually made this shot my favorite. The diffraction of light at the aperture blades of the lens creates the lines around the sun adding interest to the shot. It is not a good idea to shoot the sun without a solar filter. I did this with a mirrorless camera (looking at a LCD viewfinder and not the actual rays), at a relatively wide angle (very little of the sensor had direct sunlight), and at the peak of the eclipse (much reduced sunlight to the camera). UV light is incredibly dangerous to your eyes and can damage electronics. Don't risk what you can't lose. The second shot is the typical eclipse shot taken with a solar filter. The third photo makes the sun look like a moon crescent (with solar filter) and the last photo is just as the sun encompasses the moon (without solar filter).

Thanks,

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