2024 Eclipse from Riesel, TX

4/20/2024

When I woke up on Monday, April 8th, at our Eclipse RV site in Riesel, TX, I looked out the window to see if the prediction of clouds was true. It was! Clouds from horizon to horizon!! Then I remembered it was cloudy the morning of the 2017 Eclipse and it cleared for totality. So, I proceeded as planned and put my C130 Newtonian onto my SkyProdigy mount that was previously aligned. The C130 already had my Mallincam DS10c inserted with a 0.8x focal reducer and locked in focus from the prior CLEAR night test. I selected the sun and then slewed to it, or rather where it was behind the clouds. Here is what the skies were looking like mid-morning and me trying to stay optimistic next to my telescope that was dutifully tracking the fuzzy sun as the morning progressed.

It turns out it became less cloudy later in the morning with occasional breaks during partiality. Like 2017, it became reasonably clear during totality! I was capturing images every 2 minutes during partiality and switched to every 2 seconds just prior to totality. I did have to make periodic centering adjustments as you will notice in my images.

Below is an overview of a few of my best images during the eclipse...

Since I was using an Alt-Az mount, you will notice some field rotation. I used video mode with auto exposure to handle the changing cloud conditions. Here is a picture of my MallincamSky screen using the auto exposure box while cloudy … and you can even see a couple of sunspots (as well as the clouds)!

When totality began and I removed my solar filter, all I had to do was quickly move the box around on the screen until I saw a viable image appear. I then looked up and enjoyed seeing totality using just my eyes. Once again, I was amazed at what I saw. I believe there was some haze affecting how much of the corona was visible. But we could easily see with our naked eyes a noticeable red prominence extending down at the bottom of the sun! You can see it and some other prominences in the images. Below is an image where I have adjusted the color to approximate the view of the sun we saw with our eyes when we looked up (but without the cloudy background).

Since totality lasted 3 min 45 sec at Riesel, we also took time to view things around us during totality. We even felt a breeze at totality. Shortly after totality it began to get cloudy again.

I originally had another mount and telescope setup that I was unable to use due to focuser problems on the telescope, so I used my little SkyProdigy backup mount setup. As it turned out, it worked pretty well.

During partiality we used highly calibrated and expensive devices to also view the eclipse progress. Can you guess what devices produced these images of the eclipse of the sun?

We had some visitors to our RV site that we invited to see images on my screen of the eclipse as it progressed, in addition to their seeing it live through their paper solar glasses. Needless to say, they were astonished at what they saw live on my laptop screen. One person asked if he could take a picture of the image on the screen. I said sure. What we did not realize is their reflection on the laptop screen was also captured in their photo, turning it into a selfie with the eclipse. So, Sharon and I quickly posed for our own selfie with the eclipse. Here is our unique “selfie” on that day with the eclipse.

When Sharon and I were first married we lived in Austin, Texas for a couple of years. We enjoyed driving out into the hill country exploring what we could see. While we were in Reisel we took a day trip to drive through the hill country again. We were fortunate on this Eclipse trip to see a couple of our favorite things we remembered… fields of Indian Paintbrush flowers and Texas Bluebonnets.