Nice, relaxed eclipse. Saw new things, used new equipment, thoroughly enjoyable. Brent Watson wrote:
No optical aid, just the glass and my eye. Pretty small, but definitely there!
There are two largish groups, Brent. Which did you see, the eastern or western? Neat eclipse. My daughter's party ran long, so we decided not to miss any eclipse by driving somewhere in the middle of it. We set-up in the backyard. Luckily, I had a better vantage point than I thought, and only the last ten minutes were lost behind the trees. As the moon approached one big sunspot, I wondered if there would be a "black drop" effect, as during second and third contacts during a Mercury transit. To my surprise, I saw the opposite. A bright ring formed a "dent" in the lunar profile, seemingly to outline the largest sunspot, until about half the spot was covered. It then disappeared. Did anyone else notice this? Did you notice the fat-crescent solar images from gaps in the leaf canopy? Waiting for first contact, I set up my 2-inch f/9 homemade refractor in the family room, and aimed it out the open door at the sun. Using eyepiece projection (with a low-cost homemade eyepiece) I projected the solar image onto the ceiling, forming a bright image about 12" across. Both large suspot groups were visible, along with several smaller groups and individual small spots. I lounged back and stared at the ceiling until I saw the first "dent" in the sun. Then on went the Mylar, and up went the binos. I used Baader material, on homemade cells (a 3" PVC coupler or cap will slide-fit perfectly over the end of a Bear 15x70mm) with the bino on my new parallelogram. What a delight to use. The kids quickly got used to the pull-down motion to adjust the height, and kept coming back to check on progress. I noticed that when the sun had slid north enough to be over the GSL, the seeing seemed to steady quite a bit. This could also easily have been a more localized event. Chuck __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com