 |
 |
Observing Location, Imaging Equipment & more on the Eclipse |
|||
| Home Page & Images | Eclipse Activities | Tour of Istanbul Turkey |
 |
| Hazar Lake-Observing Location | ||||||||||
 |
||||||||||
| Elazig-just Northwest of Hazar Lake, was the staging city for the Eclipse Observing. | ||||||||||
| From the Roof of the Beritan Hotel in Elazig, Turkey | ||||||||||
| Eclipse Day at Hazar Lake Observing Location | ||||||||||
 |
||||||||||
| Shadow generated Crescent images. | ||||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||
| Telescope Field at Hazar Lake | NASA setup | |||||||
| Photographing the 1999 Eclipse... Tips, Techniques & Equipment Used | ||||||||
|
A Solar Eclipse is loaded with a
variety of features, activity and phenomena. The challenge may be
deciding which to photograph.
One may want to acquire close ups of the Prominences, but this may
mean having to forgo photographing the Corona.
A temptation is to attempt to work several instruments in order to
capture “all”. But given the
short time of Totality, this is a handful and may not yield the
desired result as the distraction of operating equipment may cause
you miss a particular event or photographic objective.
My objective was to photograph limb phenomena, which is best seen
close to 2nd
and 3rd contact.
These include, Bailey’s Beads, Prominences, Corona, Chromosphere and
Inner Corona Structure. The Telescope used was a 94mm f/6.8.Brandon Refractor. It was placed on a Losmandy G-11 Equatorial Head, supported by a custom made low profile Mahogany tripod. The 5 pound tripod could support 180 pounds, 3 times the need. Great lengths were taken to place the equipment into to 2 “small” cases. Small being defined as that which is smaller than carry on luggage according to most American Airline standards. The need for counterweights was eliminated by mounting Mel Bartel's imagining equipment on the Declination |
 |
|||||||
| Shaft. A small, one pound 12 volt Battery capable of providing 3 plus hours of | Mel Bartels & Greg Babcock with Equipment | |||||||
| tracking was used to power the Equatorial mount. Though the cases were | ||||||||
|
small, due to weight restrictions, Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines
required the luggage to be check on. In order to achieve the desired magnification, a TeleVue “2x Big Barlow Lens” was inserted into the focuser, followed by the right angled Diagonal, followed by an Extension Tube. The Diagonal acted as an extension tube, but further, the use of the diagonal provided a comfortable viewing position. This combination of diagonal and extension tube transformed the 2x Barlow Lens into a 4.4x Barlow Lens, which gave the telescope an effective focal length of 2820mm (f/30). This yielded a Solar disk image of 26mm in diameter. A 35mm Camera film size is 24mmx35mm. So the Solar Disk did not fit in the field. Full Solar Disk images were made by splicing “upper” and “lower” half’s of equal time exposures. This task was performed in “PhotoShop”. A Pentax ZX-M camera body was used for photography. This is a clever auto |
wind camera that accepts the manual focus K mount
lenses for us manual focus hold outs. This
camera can shoot up to 2 frames per second if needed.
This feature loaded SLR only weighs
11 ounces.
The film used was Kodak Professional 100VS
Ektachrome, pushed to 200 ISO. Exposure times ranged from 1/125th to 1/60th
of a second for limb activity and 1/30th to d to 1/4th of
a second for the Corona.
The Eclipse was photographed from Hazar Lake near Elazig in Southeast Turkey. Totality lasted only 2 minutes. Additional photographs were taken of the ground using a simple point and shoot camera. The leaves on a shading tree acted as many pinhole cameras, providing numerous images of the crescent Sun as it was heading toward totality. Just was another example of the variety of events that occur during an eclipse |
|||||||
| Area Media Coverage of the Eclipse | ||||||||||
 |
||||||||||
