Night Of The Eclipse
by Charlie Cotterman

With all due respect to The Honorable Mr. Bulwer-Lytton, it was neither a dark nor stormy night. The sky was clear as a bell, with only the rarest of occasional thin clouds, and with the moon being full, the yard at MVAS's Dark Sky Site at JBSPO was awash in a brilliant silvery light. What it was, though, was colder'n'snot...

I'd kept half an eye out the window as I hustled the lil' gold Chebby up Route 68 to the park, hoping I'd beat the ranger's clock and they wouldn't lock the gate before I arrived. The moon was absolutely brilliant, but somewhere about a mile out of Yellow Springs I noticed a distinct dimming of one edge. It's happening...hang a right on 343 and shove that pedal down, bwah...

I pulled into the lot at the Observatory, and began lugging gear over to a picnic table. Tripod, scope, toolbox, camera bag, eyepieces, books...assembly began apace. Well, fudge...T-ring + camera body screw down nice into the focuser, but I can't get this thing to focus adequately. Maybe this thing doesn't have the focuser travel anticipated...there ain't time to mess with it. Where's that camera adapter? Let's try the 25mm eyepiece...

The selected combination seemed to work. Images were detectable in the finder, but another problem raised up and waved for attention. The prism focuser (the center dot in the finder) doesn't work unless there's a lens on the camera, and the scope doesn't provide what the camera expects. So, any focusing has to be on the outer parts of the image, and that's a lot tougher than doing it the other way. But, let's give it a try.

Luna slowly submitted to the blandishments of the Sky Dragon, and ever so slowly (but way too fast for my likes), the Moon turned dark red and disappeared. I faked my way as best I could through various exposure times, and hoped that I'd get something recognizable on film. At its deepest red, I looked and had maybe seven shots left, so I dismounted the camera from the scope, unmounted the scope, screwed the camera to the piggyback adapter on the back scope ring, stuck the 50mm lens on, and tried to replicate a shot I'd seen in Michael Covington's book...the full moon's glare will wash out most of the stars in the sky, but during a full eclipse the Moon is dimmed down enough to see the stars. Well, this is the only chance I'm gonna have for better than a year, so let's go for it...one second...three seconds...five seconds...ten seconds...fifteen...twenty...twenty-five...focus on infinity, hold a hand in front of the lens, trip the remote release, move hand, count...replace hand (but don't touch the camera!), let the release go, and we have another 'hat trick' photo, hopefully with no shutter jitter...
It got cold that night. At maybe 1030 or so, I had to go inside to thaw out a touch. The day caught up with me, and as I sat there I kinda faded in and out or so. On occasion, I'd waken enough to participate in the surrounding conversation. It's not like there was any great philosophy being spouted that night, as usual late at night when we all get kinda bleary, and my memories of who said what to who when got more and more fuzzy as the night went on...

By 1 AM, I had had enough. I wasn't in the mood to blow any more film as I'd found out I wasn't that sure what I was doing...note to self, practice yer @$$ off before the big event next time...Everything but the toolbox and eyepieces were back in the car; those I left on the table, as the club's 16" f5.5 Dob was still out on the sidewalk. All our visitors earlier in the evening (a couple of troops of Boy Sprouts hiked over to the park from their camp, just to see the evening's events in the sky) had oohed and aahed in numerous vocal registers as they looked at the Moon among other things in the sky. With everything packed for the moment, I went back inside the break room (the only heated room in the place) and laid claim to a couch...zzzzzzzzzzz...speaking of zzzzzzzz's, for awhile I thought I was at a chain saw convention...John and Joe and Ron are nice guys, but they tend to snore. It wasn't that bad until they started with the syncopated rhythms and then moved to two and three part harmony...enough was enough...

It was 4 AM, and I got up and wandered outside. It was brilliantly lit, to the point that one could be fooled into thinking a floodlight was lit somewhere. I looked up, and grabbed the 1 1/2" adapter and a 20mm eyepiece from their boxes. Flip the Telrad on, and look through the little red heads-up display, centering Saturn. Twist the focuser and watch the rings of Saturn resolve themselves...a breathtaking sight in the bright night. What else is up? Yes, there's Orion -- hey, let's check out M42. There it is, a flowing blue wisp drifting behind Orion's sword...I just may want to invest in a nebula filter sometime...ah hah, there's Jupiter over there...cloud bands plainly obvious, and what's the Jovian diet? I Eat Green Caterpillars...the first four moons of Jupiter; Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, strung out two to a side of the gas giant...I have to make some index cards with some exposure times from the Covington book...if the information had been at fingertip, I might have tried some shots through the eyepiece...yep, things were that good...about ten til five, I reclaimed my couch, and that was the last I remember until about eleven.

Epilogue
Well, it's Monday. I picked my pictures up from the developer down at the Kroger's in Centerville. (One of the Cincinnati boys recommended Kent (the manager) as someone who knew how to develop and print astro photos. I'd used him before for the Michigan star shots, and he really does know what color the night sky is supposed to be.) Hmmm...what do we have here...



Well, I need several things: a bit more practice focusing, a little more work estimating exposures, and the tracking drive installed on this tripod come to mind immediately. There's some motion blur, and I know the focusing and exposure aren't quite what they should be. That being noted, at least I got something resembling the moon on film. It's a learning experience.

But those wide-angle shots...wow...



This is a 20-or-so second time exposure, 200 speed film, 50mm lens, Pentax K1000 camera on a tripod, no tracking motor. Yep, Covington was right, it came out fairly respectable. The Moon, the Pleiades...so neat...

So what did I learn from this little episode? Practice practice practice beforehand. Practice focusing. Practice estimating exposure times (the internal meter will fool you into overexposing). Bracket shots with exposures a couple stops above and below predicted optimum -- film is cheap.Get the tracking motor mounted on the tripod. Learn the correct method for polar aligning an equatorial mount. Get some ear plugs for the next overnighter. And tear this scanner apart and clean the underside of the scanning bed...

__________________
"If a tree is cut down in the rainforest, and is used to make paper to print a book, and the book is really bad, and there's nobody that will read it, do you still hear a sucking sound?"
Charlie in Dayton, A.AsC.