Eclipse 2012 - bad night, good news

I just had a pretty bad night; had to share a room with Esben, our tour leader from Viktors Farmor. He's really a nice guy but he snores - and it was very hot. Didn't get much sleep. I'll have to do the same on the night before the eclipse.

I used the night to charge as many batteries as I could - will do the rest in the coming days.

Just before leaving for the Bama way I checked the weather outlooks. They have improved relative to yesterday; see below!!!

Eclipse day weather outlook - not bad!!!

Eclipse 2012 - Queensland

Today we arrived in Queensland - the tropical north-eastern part of Australia where the total solar eclipse will take place just 3 1/2 days from now. It was cloudy 90% of our time in New South Wales, it was cloudy out of the airplane window all the way up here and it is cloudy right now. So much for the sunny, arid continent!

After arrival we learned that the itenary will take us up the 'Bama way' which is an aboriginal rainforest, outback path inland that should be very fantastic to experience. The catch is that we will not be able to bring any luggage of significance - hence I will be separated from all the astro-equipment that I was planning to start putting together in the coming days. Doing final practicing, alignments, checking. Now I won't be able to do that until just 10-12 hours before the eclipse!! Good thing that I practiced a lot at home.

On the Bama way: Willie Gordon, elder of the Nugal-Warra people

Eclipse 2012 - Siding Spring Observatory

Visiting comet-guru McNaught at Siding Spring.

Touring Siding Spring Observatory was great fun. We met Robert McNaught, discoverer of 73 comets and 410 asteroids, and heard about his work. We saw the great telescopes and took in the beautiful landscape views from the mountain.

Observing an outburst on the Sun

We have finally been getting a few minutes of sunshine in the mornings and I have started setting up the H-alpha scope for solar viewing with our tour guests. Yesterday witnessed an outburst from active region 1611 near the limb of the Sun. I hope that this region and others like it will be present during the eclipse next week - the more action the better on eclipse day.

Today we will leave New South Wales and fly north to Cairns. Mentally and physically this signals the next - eclipse - phase of our journey. Up until now I have not pulled out the photographic setup from my baggage stores, but starting tomorrow it will be time for that. I really hope there will MUCH more clear skies up north so that I can get som sky-time for the final preparartions.

Eclipse 2012 - script design

I have now finalized the design of the pre-programmed sequence of images to be taken during totality. Recall that I will be using a Nikon D300 DSLR with a four inch f/6.4 refractor on an Astrotrac equatorial mount. This setup will be under fully automated PC control using the 'Eclipse Ochestrator' software.

In China (2009) I used a similar setup but failed to get good images because the time interval between images was too short, causing the camera to freeze up. This time I am using a camera recycle time of 0.8 seconds which I have previously found should avoid this problem.

My setup is quite heavy and on the limits of the mount capacity. Consequently, the whole thing is fairly prone to vibrations. To minimize the risk of shutter induced vibrations I'll use a mirror lock-up time of one second. Still, from previously testing, I do expect that a significant fraction of the shots will be blurred due to wind induced mount vibrations, so it is important to shoot as many images as possible.

Using the script wizard in Eclipse Orchestrator I can generate a rough initial script to see how many shots can be pressed in during each brief phase of the eclipse. The program also chooses reasonable exposure times based on the actual setup.

I tweaked the auto-generated script so that the Earthshine shots were centered on the deepest part of the eclipse. I could also press in one extra corona image series plus a few extra corona shots here and there. Click the image below to see an overview of what I'm going to attempt. When running the script with the camera connected I see that the exposure settings are updated correctly and that the camera does not lock up. Hurray!

Camera control script - click image above to get full size version

I chose to use ISO=200 for which Eclipse Orchestrator suggested these exposure times:

• partial phase (with filter): 1/1250 sec.
• diamond ring: 1/160 sec.
• Baily's beads: 1/8000 sec.
• chromosphere: 1/5000 sec.
• prominences: 1/2500 sec.
• Earthshine: 3 sec.
• corona: 1/640, 1/200, 1/80, 1/30, 1/10, 1/4, 1/1.3 sec., corresponding to optimal coronal imaging at Rs=0.1-4.0

I hope that these times will prove to be OK!

Yesterday we approached Coonabarabran and on the way experienced the world's largest solar system drive. At the Jupiter stop, 22 km from Siding Spring Observatory, I couldn't resist attempting some serious observing!

Getting up close to Jupiter (click to get even closer!)

Eclipse 2012 - clouds and wine

Lowe winery tasting

After leaving Sydney we drove to the Blue Mountains, stayed at a great, old timer hotel and drove on into gold and wine country around Mudgee. Although the weather has been nice and warm it has also been partially cloudy and I haven’t had a chance to set up the telescopes and practice polar alignment. Due to jet lag during the first days here I usually wake up around 4 AM. Later on I have made a habit out of this since these quiet, early morning hours are great for working on the various remaining tasks for eclipse day.

I did manage to get the bulb exposure mode on the Nikon D300 working under PC control. I’m not quite sure what did the trick but now it works anyway. This is important because the bulb cable should enable a larger number of images to be taken during the all-to-brief moments of totality. I must remember to re-check that this continues to work in the coming days.

It will remain cloudy for the next few days and during this time I better get finished with the Eclipse Orchestrator script and the eclipse presentation I'm going to be giving to the guests on this trip. It really is too bad with the clouds! Tomorrow we will be going to Coonabarabran and the famous Siding Spring Observatory. This will be great, but with all the clouds I doubt that we'll get any night time observing done. Grr. Still, you can't have everything and as long as we don't get clouded out on Nov. 14th I'm not complaining!!!

Eclipse 2012 - Sydney and bulb exposure

Today we toured Sydney - Bondi Beach, the harbor, the Rocks, etc. Great fun, great weather and great food. Still, I am looking forward to leaving the big city behind and heading off to the Blue Mountains tomorrow. For me, nature and the landscapes have more allure.

I left the rest of the party early after dinner since I wanted to work more on controlling the Nikon D300 DSLR camera. I hope to get some clear, dark skies for doing star cloud photography in the coming days. I'd like to expose for maybe 1-2 minutes and this will require using the bulb exposure mode. I do have both a USB and a bulb cable - but for the last couple of times I couldn't get the setup to work. Only non-bulb exposures up to 30 sec are possible. What's wrong?

I have tried doing a bulb exposure using both ImagesPlus and the DSUSBcheck software that comes with the Shoestring shutter control cable. Doesn't work. I can do non-bulb exposures under PC control. I can do a bulb exposure without the PC, by just holding down the exposure button on the camera. What is wrong? I'm suspecting some weird camera setting is causing this. I have requested to join the ImagesPlus forum on yahoo groups - maybe someone there can help!

Other important tasks in the coming days: practice polar alignment using the southern stars; finalize the Eclipse Orchestrator script, finish preparing the talks I'll be giving to the guests. It's a hard life being a solar eclipse chaser - but someone's got to do it!

Eclipse 2012 - Finally on our way!

Now the journey has really started. I am writing this after 33 hours of airline travel interspersed with a few sporadic hours of sporadic sleep, followed by 12 hours of touring Sydney. Everything has gone well so far. I have met many old companions from earlier eclipse expeditions and some new acquaintances. We flew with the largest passenger aircraft in the world from London via Singapore to Sydney, the Airbus A380. I tried running up and down on a staircase in an airplane - never done that before. In Singapore I got an SMS from Ingrid, our oldest daughter and my eclipse expedition companion from 2008, that she had put a surprise in my baggage. I did not get a chance to find it until we arrived in Sydney - but what I found sure made me happy, see below. All in all, we have had many good omens on these first few days so I am upbeat about having success on eclipse day, eleven days from now. I still have some technical issues to go through and practice on before that happens, but for now I will very shortly retire into the bed behind me!

Some snapshots from the past days can be seen below - click them to enlarge.

Home, sweet home - our Airbus A380.

Tired travellers in Sydney.

A surprise note from Ingrid, discovered once we arrived in Australia!
(click to enlarge)