Solar Eclipse at Sunset

At this location, the Moon started moving in front of the Sun just before sunset. Just before first contact, I took some images with a telescope with a 'white light' solar filter, and also with a hydrogen-alpha (filtered) scope. Then, when the sun was almost at the horizon, I took an unfiltered shot with a 500mm (focal length) scope of the Sun and horizon. Note: if you ever do this, do not look through the camera's viewfinder to frame or focus the shot! This image was my background layer. Even at 1/4000 sec. exposure, the sun was basically a featureless white disk, but the three biggest sunspot groups were visible. The lower the Sun got, the more it became vertically compressed, so when I later superimposed the filtered shots, I had to warp them a bit to make sure they matched the outline.

Attachment 15313

Very cool ! :)

That is awesome Doug. Very nice results, and thanks for sharing.

Neat stuff!! Great results. You dont see something like this often.

Very Nice!!

Amazing!

I am so pissed, and jealous that we couldn't see the eclipse from the east coast! I love that you even captured the sunspots! Supercool!

Very nice.

Great image. Those sunspots are cool.

Thanks, everyone for the comments. Here are two more shots. The first is a cropped single filtered image taken just prior to the original background image showing how the atmosphere distorted the appearance of the low altitude sun. The other shot was taken without a filter just as the sun touched the horizon. I don't know if you'll be able to see the sunspots but they were all visible in the original unresized image. What also helped to reduce the Sun's brightness was the smog which had drifted northward from Southern Ontario.

500mm (focal length) refractor, F6.2, ISO 800, 1/10 sec. exposure
Attachment 15338

500mm refractor, F6.2, ISO 100, 1/4000 sec. exposure
Attachment 15337

that looks cool.