Originally shared by Pierre Markuse

Solar Eclipse 2017 – Low-tech with great results

In this animation of images made by Helen Read you can see today’s Solar eclipse (https://goo.gl/ztB3Yo) with a maximum coverage of about 60% at her location.

Today you will of course be flooded with images of the solar eclipse (and with good reason, it really is interesting!), but I like these images because they show what kind of results you can get, even with relatively simple technology.

Read here what Helen said about making this animation:

The images were taken using an Android smartphone (Moto X Pure Edition) held up to a 28 mm (2″ diameter) eyepiece on an 8″ Dobsonian telescope. The only processing I did was to crop the images (and flip them to reverse the mirror image coming from the Dob). I used the Google Photos animation tool to make the animation, easy peasy.

I have an adapter for mounting my phone on a 1.25″ telescope eyepiece but couldn’t get the entire Sun in the field of view that way, so I just held the phone by hand over a 2″ eyepiece. The exposure was hit or miss, but you can nonetheless see sunspots in some of the frames.

I would say the result is quite impressive!

Image credit: Solar Eclipse 2017 animation Helen Read You can find Helen on Twitter as well: https://twitter.com/ReadHPR

Thank you for your interest in this Astronomy/Astrophysics collection. Maybe add me on Google+ (Pierre Markuse) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/Pierre_Markuse) or have a look at the Space/Space Technology collection here: https://goo.gl/5KP0wx

#science #astronomy #eclipse #eclipse2017 #solareclipse #solareclipse2017 #amateurastronomy #solarastronomy