June 10th 2002
solar annular eclipse as observed by Orange County Astronomers members.
Many OCA members managed to catch a glimpse of
the annular solar eclipse that was visible in southern California
on June 10th. This is their story!
Greg Pyros had the following
comments
"Amazing as it may sound, it
was reasonably clear here at the Newport Beach coast for
imaging the eclipse from my backyard. 'Reasonably' means
that most of the frames are clear, but the clouds came through
on a few near the beginning, causing some flashing on a
few frames.
I piggybacked a TV-85 (600mm at
f/7) on a 10" LX-200 and imaged with a Nikon D1 CCD (removable
lens), using the Baader visual solar film. This gave me
a series of 2000x1312 resolution images at 12 bits per color,
over 600 megs of data to start with. "
Greg ended up creating some excellent
movies showing the complete sequence of the eclipse.
View the quick-time
version (recommended) 500KB in size
View the AVI
version 900KB in size.
UPDATE: Gregs work is published
on the Sky
& Telescope web site.
Also check out Gregs
web site for other great work he has done.
Russell Sipe has a great article
on his StarCruiser.com
web site illustrating some quite "different" ways
that you could observe the eclipse
"I've created a very brief
photo essay on yesterday's solar eclipse as observed from
my home in Orange County.."
Barbara Toy had this to say
regarding her experiences....
I hope everyone got a chance to
see at least part of the eclipse this evening. I saw it
in bits and pieces through the clouds from my back deck
- including several times when a layer of clouds formed
enough of a filter that it could be seen directly through
the clouds, which looked really cool. Of course, there were
a number of other times when it was lost completely behind
clouds, which was frustrating, particularly near the end
of the eclipse.
I was up in Costa Mesa most of the day, and the cloud cover
was much heavier up there than further south, but I couldn't
tell how far inland it went - at least my gamble on coming
home to see it worked out pretty well.
Interesting sidenote - while I was out observing all this,
there were a number of people who walked/jogged by, but
I didn't see any of them even look up toward the sun, even
when you could see through the clouds that it had a big
chunk out of one side. And they didn't seem to notice me
playing around with the telescope out on my deck, either....
Dave Kodama had the following
experience
I was down in Orange County under
clouds, but drove back home to Cerritos during the eclipse
to find Cerritos completely free of clouds. I did look at
the eclipse with a Thousand Oaks orange tint filter, which
is aesthetically more pleasing than the Baader filter to
me, but I think I enjoyed the strange soft eclipse lighting
the most.
Pat Stoker shared the following
I decided to shoot some Elite Chrome
100EC for this one instead of video. It was clear in Anaheim
for the whole eclipse. Also a lot of fun to watch through
my 70mm Ranger. I had never seen anything like that small
little trail of sunspots just below center before.
Larry Adkins posted the following
image to his
web-site

This is what Dan Schechter had to say
Here is a silhouette of Doug Millar
and Helen Mahoney during the eclipse on 6-10-02. It is an
unrecorded exposure on Fuji Velvia 50 with a 50mm lens without
a filter since the sun was behind the clouds. We were set
up in on the cliffs overlooking Lunada Bay in Palos Verdes.
We got a nice view of the eclipse. The short time the sun
was behind the clouds actually enhanced our experience.

Unfortunately I personally missed
out on the opportunity to observe the eclipse- as I was in
the UK at the time.
See you all soon!
Liam Kennedy
OCA President
Many of the above comments from OCA
Members were shared with me via email and also via one of
the online-forums for OCA Members and the public. Even non-members
can join the OCAstronomers forum on Yahoogroups. Just go to
groups.yahoo.com/group/OCAstronomers
to join in the fun!
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