I was lucky enough to be able to catch the total solar eclipse on April 8th -- one of the most spectacular things I've seen in my life! My original plan was to watch the eclipse from Dallas, TX. However, when the various weather models seemed to converge on predictions for stormy weather in the area at that time, I changed my plans to travel to St. Louis, MO. On the morning of the eclipse, I checked the weather at 5 am and drove 2 hours south to Sikeston, MO, where I watched the eclipse from within their recreation park (near the local airport). I was about 40 miles south of the centerline, where totality lasted 3 min. 30 sec. Aside from a few minutes toward the beginning of the eclipse, the sky conditions were nearly perfect.

To be able to change positions quickly if needed, I decided to fly out to the eclipse from San Francisco. This meant that I had to be able to travel with my equipment on the airplane. I ended up putting together a small portable system that I could take with me and set up quickly. I purchased a 60 mm diameter / 362 mm FL Astro-Tech refractor, which I hoped to eventually use for deep sky imaging. This, along with my Canon 200D (astro-modified) camera, intervalometer,  laptop, and adaptors, was able to fit in a small backpack under my airplane seat. I mounted this to a star tracker, polar alignment wedge, and carbon fiber tripod. These items went in my check luggage. As backup, I also packed a spare tripod, batteries, and manual mount with slow motion controls in my carry-on bag. I also brought a 200 mm zoom lens and a back-up camera in case, due to a last-minute change in location to avoid clouds, I did not have enough time to put together my full setup.

I used the program SETnC to automate the image acquisition so that I could simply watch and enjoy the eclipse. In the months leading up to the eclipse, I found that a ISO setting of 200 worked well for photographing the crescent moon from my back yard. The program looped continuously during totality, varying the exposure time between 1/4000 s, 1/1000 s, 1/250 s, 1/60 s, 1/15 s, 1/4 s, 1 s, and 4 s. At 2nd and 3rd contact, I took images at an exposure time of 1/4000 s, at roughly 1 s intervals. Overall, the software worked really nicely, and allowed me to forget about taking photos during totality and just enjoy the experience. I had attempted to use Eclipse Orchestrator also but had trouble with it connecting to my camera. It seems like very nice software, and I still found it useful for predicting the appearance of the Bailey's beads and calculating the error between my PC clock and my GPS-determined time / location.

The HDR composite shown here was created from the 8 exposures described above, mostly using PhotoShop. I first performed a modest noise reduction on the raw files and then performed a manual alignment on each exposure. For the shortest exposures, I simply used the lunar disc as the reference point for the alignment. A few stars were visible in the longer exposures which I used for more precise alignment. I then created a greyscale version of each layer and performed a radial (spin) blur. I subtracted each image from its blurred counterpart to emphasize the details in each exposure. I then combined the enhanced exposures into a single luminance layer, which I superimposed on the averaged color image at 75% opacity. It was not possible to account for the motion of the moon in front of the sun during the eclipse. My "cheat" to correct for this was to enlarge the lunar disc from the 1/60 s image by 1% and then superimpose it on the composite.

It was incredible to see the eclipse itself, and it was easily one of the most vividly memorable things that I have seen. At 75% coverage, I noticed the birds seemed confused, and the dogs in a nearby park started barking! The abruptness of the onset of darkness was remarkable, as was the beautiful 360 degree sunset effect. Even without a telescope, solar prominences were visible -- truly remarkable to see this with the unaided eye! The environment in Sikeston was also quite relaxed -- it seemed like a nice town that I would enjoy visiting again. Seeing one of these eclipses is something I had wanted to do since I was a kid, and I am glad I finally had a chance to do this!

I was relieved to see that, despite unfavorable predictions, the weather turned out better than expected for most people. In the midst of the eclipse preparations and an extremely busy time at work, I have fallen behind on staying in touch with people on this forum -- however, I have certainly enjoyed hearing about everyone's experiences with the eclipse! I hope you enjoy the image, and wishing everyone clear skies.