Blog
-
August 16th, 2008
🇩🇪 - Partial lunar eclipse in Wolfsburg, Germany (more…)On August 16th, 2008, a rather intense partial lunar eclipse occurred. As in the evening dense cloudfields approached from both east and west, I decided with a friend to drive to the center of the intermediate cloud-free zone to observe the eclipse from there in full length.
We set back about 150 kilometers and set up an EQ6 telescope mount on a field near Wolfsburg, which we loaded with a 10" Newton reflector and a 900mm refractor on a dual fixture. A Canon EOS 40D made photos in preprogrammed intervalls of diverse exposure times at the reflector. For the automation, I used the software Eclipse Orchestrator, which I have been using successfully two weeks earlier at a solar eclipse in Russia. The observation site was perfectly chosen because at the beginning of the eclipse the moon rose above the dense cloud field on the eastern horizon. During the entire umbral phase, the sky in the direction of the moon was largely clear.
The video shows an animation of the single frames, which were centered on the much larger circular umbral shadow of Earth. It visualizes how the moon glides through it in its orbit. At mid-eclipse, the moon sank to more than four-fifths of its diameter into the umbral shadow, its southern hemisphere glew only in a pale reddish light.
Date: August 16th, 2008
Author: © Oliver Szachowal & Christoph Rollwagen
Exposure: 4 sec on ISO100
Camera: Canon EOS 40D
Lens: 1200mm Skywatcher Newton Reflector f/4.8 + Baader ComaCorrector
Location: Nordsteimke near WolfsburgAugust 1st, 2008
🇷🇺 - Total Solar Eclipse in Sibiria, Russia (more…)On August 1st, 2008, one of the most fascinating natural phenomena could be observed within a narrow zone that ran from north to south through Siberia and other regions. People located within that strip were able to see a total eclipse of the sun.
On the preceeding days countless eclipse enthusiasts from all over the world traveled to the Russian metropolis Novosibirsk. Only on such a rare event it is possible to marvel at the transient splendor of the mighty corona of the sun. When the solar disk is completely covered by the moon, for just a few minutes an observer gets an idea that the sun is a highly complex entity whose usually invisible corona - a bewitchingly detailed crown of hot plasma - occupies a vast area in the sky.
With two friends, I experienced the eclipse in a small Russian village on the south bank of the mighty Ob water reservoir, far away from civilization and almost directly on the centerline of the eclipse. The wind blew quite strong on that warm summer day whipping up the waves on the water. The sky appaered almost cloudless. During totality, planet Mercury shone as a remarkably bright object close to the corona. Through my binoculars, I recognized long streamers of sunlight around the dark silhouette of the moon spilling out into space.
The human eye is able to recognize even the finest details and structures. However, the photographic portraiture of a solar corona is one of the most difficult projects in astro photography. The extreme contrast in luminosity between the bright inner parts and the inconspicuous outer areas of the corona makes it impossible to image the phenomenon on a single photo. The rareness and the short duration of total solar eclipses do not allow any experiments, but require a high level of concentration and preparation in choosing the travel destination, the equipment that is being used, and the strategies that are applied to achieve the desired result. And finally, the processing of extremely detailed eclipse photos requires a lot of time, many years of experience and the use of special and suitable software.
At that event I exposed my photos for the first time using a fully automatic program. Two cameras with tele-lenses were connected to a notebook. The predefined exposure series were processed by the software Eclipse Orchestrator. Later, I combined multiple shots of different exposure times and created this stunningly detailed HDR version.
The picture shows some prominances performing out behind the silhouette of the moon. On the dark lunar surface bigger structures are visible, which were illuminated by the light, that was reflected by earth. The brightest star close to the eclipsed sun is the 3.93 mag bright 'Asellus Australis' (delta Cnc) in the constellation Cancer.
Date: August 1st, 2008 @ 11:44:46 CET
Copyright: © Matthias Kleinke & Christoph Rollwagen
Camera: Canon EOS 350D
Lens: 432mm William Optics Megrez 72FD Apochromat f/6 + Baader ComaCorrector
Location: Sosnovka near Novosibirsk, RussiaMay 12th, 2006
🇩🇪 - Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (more…)After a breakup of periodic comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 in 1995 the remaining fragments had a close encounter with earth in may 2016 - at a minimum distance of 11.8 million kilometers, even closer than the famous comet Hyakutake in early 1996. Racing through the constellations Bootes, Corona Borealis, Herkules, Lyra and Cygnus within a few days only. For almost a month I was able to observe the two brightest fragments as they approached Earth and finally became visible to the naked eye.
Time: April 18th - May 13th, 2006
Author: © Christoph Rollwagen
Camera: Canon EOS 300D
Lenses: 50mm f/2,8, 200mm f/4
Locations: Potsdam / Brandenburg an der Havel