Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

Eclipse morning at Chaos Manor South.

Ah, yes, THE GREAT AMERICAN ECLIPSE How did it play out down here in the Swamp? The night before as I sat on the couch with the felines watching a rerun of a (Bob Heil) Ham Nation episode on the YouTube, I wasn’t feeling overly excited. The weather forecast for Possum Swamp did not look good. No, not good at all:  Clouds, unrelenting clouds. Maybe rain. 

In fact, eclipse day forecasts had sounded lousy for weeks. Not much hope for us—nor for more than a few points west into the path of totality. That was OK; I’d long ago decided to sit this one out. In these latter days, I’m just not up for long drives and trying to find a $250-a-night room at the freaking Motel 6. Anyhoo, I planned to go to bed when I got tired, wake up when I felt like it Monday morning, prepare to teach my afternoon and evening classes at the university, and not spend much time worrying about eclipses.  

Not that I wouldn’t try to see SOMETHING. I had a secret weapon. A special sort of telescope, a ZWO SeeStar S50 smart telescope. Despite the somewhat corny name, this little device is making waves amongst those interested in such things for its ability to take pictures of things in the sky—Sun, Moon, galaxies, nebulae, star clusters—with amazing clarity and to do that cheaply and easily. That, a couple pairs of eclipse glasses for me and Miss Dorothy, and that would be it for our eclipse expedition to the backyard. 

What’s involved in taking pictures of the Sun with the SeeStar S50? Not much. Level the camera tripod. Put the scope on it. Push the power button. When the scope says, “Power on! Ready to connect!” Open the SeeStar app on your smartphone, click “connect,” click “Solar,” and the scope will unfold itself and tell you to attach the (included) solar filter. It then finds, centers, and tracks the Sun on its own. 

You don’t have to stay outside with the SeeStar; once you turn on the scope, you can retire inside with your smartphone. In the SeeStar’s normal “station” mode, it communicates with your smartphone through your home network. It also has considerable built-in memory and is, yeah, a smart little telescope.

Inside, sitting on the couch with Miss D, the scope was delivering a live view of the Sun on my phone. You can just watch that. Or you can take still photos the scope will send to your phone. Or you can take videos and time-lapse sequences that are stored in the telescope’s onboard memory for later retrieval. I had intended to do a time-lapse of the whole eclipse, but it looked like the clouds would make that futile. 

Just before eclipse time, though, there was a little more clearing. Oh, it was obvious we were still looking through a layer of clouds, but the Sun was brighter and suddenly I could see a missing chunk that signaled the Great American Eclipse had begun.

I went outside occasionally and looked up at Sol with eclipse glasses but could definitely see more on the iPhone. Not that we were seeing much. A little here, a little there. Just enough to tempt and tantalize. I did take some stills and a short video (posted on the W4IAX Facebook page), but they were really not much. Better than nothing? Sure. More than I’d expected to get? Definitely.

# posted by Rod Mollise @ 9:11 AM