Our most interesting eclipse season in a couple of years - we got a total lunar eclipse on Oct 8, and then a good partial solar eclipse today. A perfect opportunity to share the event with my students and others at Cabrillo College. The best scope for the job was the Meade ETX 125, with Thousand Oaks solar filter. I cobbled together the right bolts to mate it to our ETX tripod, loaded them last night into my car, stored at the Planetarium, and then biked in to Cabrillo today for the eclipse. I set up on the walkway just below the library, as a high-traffic area likely to attract student interest....
Austin gets a little help, using his bino's to project the crescent sun. |
More gather 'round |
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A panoply of present and former students converge near maximum eclipse. |
I was hoping Rachel would bring her tortoise, Nobel, who maybe could munch the grass while waiting his turn at the scope... but, no. |
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Rachel embodies the Such-ness of Reality by pinhole camera-projecting the solar crescents |
Sue Broadston brought down her Physics class for 15 minutes to see the eclipse. I talked about the eNORmous sunspot group which was so big you could see it without a telescope, and what causes sunspots. |
The sunspot group was the largest I can ever remember seeing. |
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I'm proudly wearing my "Pikes Peak Half Marathon" finishers shirt, earned in August at the toughest half marathon anywhere. |
It was really a beautiful eclipse, and special to share it with so many good young people. |
An object lesson in image plane projection. Upside down/left-right reversed image on paper. |
The last bit of moon is exiting the sun's face at upper right (the curve at lower left is the field-of-view of the eyepiece. And that was that! |
A last look. This, from a student of my first Astro 7 "Climate" course 3 semesters ago. Austin, in the background, had a great time helping. Welcome to the "circle of trust", Austin! |
