October 23 2014 Partial Solar Eclipse

QuickLook

As an eclipse chaser (total that is) the partial phase is just an annoyance until totality. It is exciting as watching paint dry since everything happens slowly over about 1.5 hours. In this case no place on earth (that was itself illuminated) saw the full shadow of the moon. The shadow past over the arctic which was already in darkness. Thus partial is what we settled for.

The almost full eclipse happened in high arctic

NASA Eclipse map of 10 23 14 eclipse

It did not make sense to go there for a better partial so I just viewed this one from home. San Jose had scattered high clouds. For the most part this did not interfere, but some pictures showed a halo due the the clouds.

All of the times are given in UTC. PDT is - 7 hours.

2053 UTC

The first little wedge of moon appears. Note the many groups of sunspots.

2118 UTC

2218 near the Eclipse Max

2250

Equipment

Part of my interest in this eclipse was that it provided an opportunity to check out the equipment I will use in the arctic in 2015. Thus the rather bizare arraignment of placing an AstroTrac on top of a GEM mount

This was the first time using the 60Da for eclipse work. It will make my life much easier.

Copyright

All photos and text concerning the Partial Solar Eclipse 2014 were taken by Robert J. Hawley and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. This permits the non commercial use of the material on this site, either in whole or in part, in other works provided that I am credited for the work.

I have also granted a commercial license for some of the images.