We arrived in Cottonwoods RV Park in Columbia, MO on Friday 8/18/17, and I used Saturday to set up and test out my equipment. It was a beautifully sunny day ... Saturday would have been a great day for an Eclipse! Several campers set up their equipment for viewing the eclipse in an open area.
One person has an ingenious pin hole eclipse viewing box on a tripod setup making it easy to track and see the Eclipse – no solar glasses needed.
Our next door neighbor campers, Dan and Mark, set up two really nice refractors for the Eclipse.
My Remote Video Astronomy setup is just outside our camper. While previously testing one day outside back home in MS for over 3 hot hours, I had problems with my laptop overheating. So I now place my laptop inside our Camper with USB3 extension cables out to the DS2.3+ and a long HDMI cable from inside to a monitor outside. I used SkyFi + SkySafari on my iPhone to center the image as needed from inside or outside. A companion program to SkySafari was released for this eclipse called Eclipse Safari that provided local information about the Eclipse.
My Remote Video Astronomy setup will allow us be to outside to periodically look at the Sun through solar glasses, as well as see the camera image on the outside monitor as the eclipse progresses. I used my MallinCam DS2.3+ with a Coronado PST on a SkyProdigy mount. I unscrewed the lens from my Coronado Barlow and screwed it into the nosepiece of the DS2.3+ which produces an easily focused image that fills the field of view (as I described in my 8/3/2017 post).
I can also go inside at times where it’s cooler and see the image on the laptop screen and capture periodic images.
I hope to turn on auto recording just before totality begins and then go outside to experience the total eclipse of the Sun.
I captured several images during the test time and settled on periodically grabbing two images at a time - one showing prominences and the other the Sun's surface. I can then combine them later to produce a composite image.
I captured several images during the test time and settled on periodically grabbing two images at a time - one showing prominences and the other the Sun's surface. I can then combine them later to produce a composite image.
Of course all this is very dependent on the weather here. As I write this on Sunday, the day before the Eclipse, it rained this morning, but the Sun just came out and it looks nice again outside this afternoon. The prediction for tomorrow (which changes constantly) is for partly cloudy skies. If there is light rain, I even have an umbrella ready.
I'll be happy for just occasional views of the Eclipse!
But as they say, the best laid plans of Mice and Men...
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