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March 29th, 2006
🇹🇷 - eclipse 2006 in Turkey (more…)Following a four-week holiday in Australia, I flew to Turkey at the end of March 2006 and spent a few days on the Mediterranean coast in Side. Throughout the city, I met people who, like me, came to see a total eclipse of the sun. In my hotel, I met some German amateur astronomers, who had some brilliant astrophotos in their luggage.
On eclipse day I met friends from the Netherlands. After an early lunch together, we decided to observe the eclipse not on the beach but on a nearby hill. It appeared to be a few feet high and offered in the midst of a flat area a clear view in all directions. We left very late and the foodpath towards there, which led over a large overgrown field, took much longer than expected. I unpacked my camera and made the first photos of the beginning partial phase on my feet. Luckily I used my lightweight and portable travel telescope 350mm Meade ETX-70 f/5 on a Canon EOS 300D as a photo lens. Already after the meal I got it ready-for-use and put it into my backpack. So it was not difficult to take a picture while standing on the field every few seconds. Also, exactly focussing the device succeeded quite well, as for weeks previously I had practiced taking many photos of the sun and the moon.
At the hill so many people had gathered that I found little space for my tripod. I decided to settle on a large neighboring meadow where my friends had arrived with our rental car. From there, I was able to comfortably document the progressing obscuration of the sun while sitting on the ground.
The sky was almost cloudless and the umbral shadow announced its approach with a darkening of the southwest horizon. It raced towards our observatory from Africa across the Mediterranean. A few seconds before the sun was completely covered by the moon, I noticed on the white paint of my rental car conspicuously rich-contrasted parallel shadows swirling around. I was frightened for a moment, until I realized that the time of the flying shadows had come. For the first time, I witnessed this paralyzing moment. In the distance, the Taurus Mountains suddenly shone in orange light.
With the diamond-ring effect the last direct sunlight disappeared. During totality, in the sky above us an impressive and bright corona shone all around the silhouette of the moon. I thought I saw a huge eye in the sky. The many people in the meadow cheered, shrieked and clapped. In the area, residents fired New Year's Eve rockets into the sky. I sat behind my camera all the time, making as many frames of different exposure times as possible. From time to time I looked up through my binoculars into the corona or gazed around at the colorful twilight sky. I observed the solar corona alternately with the naked eye and through the viewfinder eyepiece of my camera.
I could easily process my photo sequence, but the constant change of the exposure times took up much of my concentration. Ultimately, I was permanently distracted from the actual observation. I decided to use an automatic remote control and maybe even a faster camera on my next eclipse observation to generate more frames of higher quality and to have more time for myself to enjoy the eclipse effects.
From the photo and video footage that we were able to win that day, I made a DVD documentation with Adobe Flash, which can be seen in this video.
Date: March 29th, 2006
Author: © Christoph Rollwagen
Cameras: Canon EOS 300D, Sony DSC-P8, Sony MVC-CD200
Location: Side, TurkeyOctober 3rd, 2005
🇪🇸 - Annular solar eclipse in Madrid, Spain (more…)On October 3rd, 2005, a not uncommon but still special form of a solar eclipse could have been observed in Spain and other regions, in which the silhouette of the moon crossed the solar disk centrally but didn't cover it completely. In case the tip of the conical umbral shadow of the moon does not reach the surface of the earth because the distance between the moon and the earth is too large, an annular eclipse can be observed within a limited area on the ground below. The moon appears a little smaller than the sun on such a day and therefore can not completely cover it. During mid-eclipse a bright ring of sunlight can be observed for several minutes all around the silhouette of the moon.
In October 2005 I flew to Madrid for a couple of days, because the centerline of the zone of visibility was to run directly across the capital of Spain. On the morning of the eclipse day, I went to Parque del Retriro and looked for a favorable place for my observation. There I met some people, who also visited Madrid from other European countries to experience and document the eclipse in that place live. On a small meadow, I set up my camera - a Canon EOS 300D with a light-weighted 350mm Meade ETX-70 f/5 refractor as a lens on an ordinary tripod. Every few seconds I made a photo of the partially eclipsed sun by manually triggering and guiding the camera through regular corrections of the field of view. During the central phase, I increased the frame rate and afterwards created the time lapse animation from the captured frames. During the contacts I made as many photos as possible. With these photos I was able to create a lunar rim profile, which resembles to the models provided by NASA quite much.
Luckily I had the time to observe the surrounding landscape. There were young trees all around me, that casted shadows onto the ground. Within these, projections of uncountable moving rings of light were visible. Because of the very limited sunlight the surrounding appeared in a special light, that seemed to me somehow unsatured or even artificial.
After the eclipse, I visited the nearby observatory and met young people from the Netherlands. We've spent the sunny afternoon together in the park, in which a thief tried to steal my camera including the memory card with all the eclipse photos on. Luckily, one of our group noticed the attempt immediately and wrested the long finger from his prey.
Date: October 3rd, 2005
Copyright: © Christoph Rollwagen
Camera: Canon EOS 300D
Lens: 350mm Meade ETX-70 f/5 + Baader AstroSolar Solar Filter mylar ND=3,8
Location: Madrid, SpainJune 8th, 2004
🇩🇪 - 2004 Transit of Venus in Calbe (Saale), Germany (more…)On June 8th, 2004 the first of the current century's two transits of planet venus in front of the sun occured. To get away from cloud cover that was present in the morning I decided to leave Brandenburg an der Havel by car and headed towards the southwest along the highways 2 and 14. During my ride the transit had already begun. I drove some 130 km until I had left behind the field of clouds and ended around 9 a.m. in a little village close to Calbe (Saale). From there I could observe the last two thirds of the centennial event at blue skies with my humble equipment.
For visual observation I used a 1000mm reflector telescope. From time to time I took images of the planet's silhouette with a digital camera held in front of the eyepiece. During mid of the transit around 10.30 a.m. I projected the image of the solar disc onto an improved screen, so that I could capture the whole disc of the sun. At about 1 p.m. the silhouette of venus touched the rim of the sun and disappeared slowly within the subsequent half hour. I couldn't take any photos of the actual moments of contact because I observed them visual.
On my relaxed way home I stopped at a supermarket in Dessau and realized that people are staring at me. After more then 4 hours in direct sunlight I had got a quite strong sunburn - my face was glowing red.
Date: June 8th, 2004
Copyright: © Christoph Rollwagen
Camera: Sony Mavica CD200
Lens: 1000mm Bresser Mizar Newton reflector f/8
Location: Schwarz near Calbe (Saale), Germany