Annular Eclipse, Oct 14, Santa Fe, NM

"White light" sequence (color added in post processing). Orion 80mm ED f/7.5 telescope.

This is very near mid eclipse.

(As usual, click on any image to get access to the full-size versions.)

I thought I saw a flash of "Bailey's Beads" just before this exposure, but was a little slow on the shutter button.  This is pretty close, though.

Hydrogen-alpha light, near mid-eclipse. Lunt LS50THa double stack. Some extra tedious processing was required to bring out the prominences.

Another Hydrogen-alpha shot, about 30 min before maximum eclipse.

Here is a white light companion to the above shot, color corrected to a neutral balance.

The weather in Santa Fe on the day of the eclipse was near perfect with no clouds and not a breath of wind.  Santa Fe was located inside the northern edge of the annularity zone for this eclipse, giving a slightly off-center view of the moon crossing the sun.

For white-light photos I used an Orion 80mm ED f/7.5 refractor with an aluminized mylar front filter, a field flattener and an Olympus E-M1iii camera set to ISO 200 and 1/2000 sec shutter speed.  The scope was riding on a motorized Celestron CG-4 equatorial mount.  Piggy-backed on this scope was an Olympus E-M5iii camera attached to a Tokina 400mm f/5.6 SD telephoto lens with a Al-mylar filter.  The lens was set to f/11 and the camera was set to ISO 200 and 1/500 sec shutter speed.

I set up an additional scope for recording images in Hydrogen-alpha (Hα) light.  This scope was a double-stacked Lunt Solar Systems LS50THa with a ZWO ASI178mm monochrome camera, and was riding on a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer mount set up in full equatorial counter-weight mode.  This mount worked quite well.  One disadvantage of the Hα scope is that the ZWO camera requires a USB computer connection, so it is more complicated to operate than just pressing a shutter button.  In  addition, the etalon filters on this scope are nonuniform in their efficiency, so the exposure will vary across the image even with a lot of fussing to find the "sweet spot".  

Hα light is the wavelength emitted (656.28 nm or 6562.8 Å) when ionized hydrogen drops from the second to the first excited state.  This wavelength is in the red part of the visual spectrum.  A "double-stacked" scope refers to one with two etalons.  This combination reduces the band-pass to about 0.5 Å for improved contrast.  The attraction of imaging at the Hα wavelength is that prominences and filaments on the sun will become visible.

In addition to the imaging scopes, I set up a scope in the front yard for visual observation.  This was an Astro-Tech AT72ED f/6 refractor with a Lunt Solar Wedge and an additional ND-0.9 (0.125) neutral-density filter screwed on to a Tele Vue Delite 18.2mm eyepiece (24x). This was riding on a manual tracking Explore Scientific Twilight I Alt-Az mount.  Five neighbors and friends showed up to enjoy the spectacle with this scope and various hand-held solar filters.

The image below shows the "totality" sequence obtained with the 400mm Tokina lens, with no color correction to alter the pale violet tint of the Al-Mylar filter.  The time between the second and fifth images is a few seconds more than 2 min, which agrees well with the predictions for eclipse duration at our location in Santa Fe.  

Tokina 400mm @ f/11. No color correction.