October 2023 Annular Eclipse
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Seeing interesting places in the world is always a side benefit of eclipse chasing. In this case the eclipse occurred at the same time as the annual Balloon Fiesta. This is something that I have always wanted to see. In this annual event folks come from all over the country (world?) to display their unique balloon designs. The highlights normally are the mass launches and the glow shown below.
The main site of the Fiesta is almost on the centerline. Much to their credit the organizers partnered with NASA to hand out safety glasses and information so they could incorporate the eclipse into the event.
We visited on Friday (the day before) since we had other things to think about the next morning. Remote parking HIGHLY recommended.
The track of this eclipse was similar to 2012, but shifted east and thus in the morning rather than at sunset.
We chose Albuquerque because it had some of the best climate prospects. This was almost another case where "climate" differed from "weather" as a weak cold front passed overnight. It was not quite the Easter Island experience of hitting refresh on the satellite images all night, but it was good when by Wednesday the weather models predicted the clouds would pass by the time of C2 Saturday morning and, if not, they would be high clouds.
The centerline passed right through the city so it was a case of finding public land where we would not be disturbed. I talk about the process I used below in Site .
Images of Annularity
This is the section, after all, that viewers are interested in. Namely what I captured during the eclipse. First off, this was the second outing for my new CaptureEclipse program. With the correct ΔT this time its predictions were spot on.
I opted for another centerline view. Thus, if the weather and camera gods permitted, I was in store for another bullseye shot like I took in 2012.
This image captures the moon at the point of maximum eclipse
This was an image taken at 16:37:02 UTC
The exposure was 1/1328, F 6.3, ISO 100
I was curious how the moon size compared to to the 2012 eclipse. Initially I tried doing this by comparing the images, but they were so close I could not decide. If only I had access to an iOS app that could calculate the apparent size of the moon during the eclipse. Oh yeah I wrote one.
The "magnitude" is the size of the moon relative to the sun (i.e. a smaller magnitude means a smaller moon). This is one of the outputs of the Bessel equations
| Year | Magnitude |
|---|---|
| 2012 | .968 |
| 2023 | .973 |
So the moon was about 6% smaller in 2012
This image shows C2 the beginning of the Annular Eclipse.
This was an image taken at 16:34:36 UTC
The exposure was 1/1328, f 6.3, ISO 100
This shows the end of Annularity
This was an image taken about 16:39:27 UTC
The exposure was 1/1328, F/6.3, iso 100
One of the unique features of this eclipse was that at C2 and C3 dots could be seen along the moon/sun edge for about 1/2 second. I did not see this effect in the C2 images, but I caught it in this C3 image
This effect likely also occurs during total eclipses, but in those cases one normally is not looking through shielded binos during C2/C3. We would normally catch this effect as Bailey's Beads where the bright sun is showing through the moon's surface. I will try to remember to view C2 throught shielded binos next year in Texas.
Viewing Site
Since the track was through an urban area finding a place to set up took some research. Our hotel was not poorly situated, but it had trees on the property. There was a shopping center across the street that was my first choice. Fortunately as described next I found a better choice as there was heavy construction in the area I planned to set up as well as lights.
After some investigation I correlated the centerline from Eclipsewise with Google and Apple Maps. That is how I discovered Arroyo del Oso Park. Looking at the street views in both lead me to an eclipse site. We checked it out Friday morning, but it looked perfect in every way (it even had a restroom within walking distance!)
which was almost directly on the centerline, public, and with a great south view (actually the Arroyo)
Here are some photos of the Site
This is my setup described further below
Looking over my shoulder you can see more balloons
Balloon Fiesta
The eclipse happened to overlap with the world famous Balloon Fiesta. For those of you not familiar with this balloons from all across the US (world?) participate in several mass launches and the glow events.
This was literally the largest event we have attended since COVID hit. There were thousands packed into the field
Balloon Glow
We saw on the schedule that the event for the evening was the "glow". We did not really know what that was, but we took the advice of the announcer and ventured into the field among the balloons. What was in store was a unique experience
The "Glow" happened when the announcer asked the balloonists to light their burners at the same time. In the darkening skies this resulted in the balloon appearing to be lit from the inside
Technical
- Canon 60Da Camera
- Televue TV 76
- Kendrick Baader Filter
- Orion Skyview Pro mount
- 13" M1 MacBook 2020 Pro
- Orion folding table
All in all the equipment worked great. Having a real equatorial mount made adjustments easy. This was also a rehearsal for April 2024. It served as a reminder to always include airtags into your luggage.
This was the second real test of my new image capture program and the first after fixing the ΔT problem. There were some lessons learned that will need to be reflected in a future version
- The exposures were all correct.
- There is no way to sync a 60D camera to the correct time. Because all of the exposures were the same
I did not have footprints to correlate the images in my camera to my log of the exact times photos
were taken.
Thus I made some guesses. The images
were taken at the right time, but, especially at C3, I had to guess which is which.
The odds of my ever seeing an annular again are low; however, I am going to include some marker exposures in version 2.0 to mark the end of C2, max, and C3.