The Annular Eclipse

Today is the day we have been waiting for and why we traveled 1,000 miles to New Mexico.  We were up at 7:30 after a very windy night of rocking and rolling in our little camper.  There is a clear blue sky with a few skiffs of thin high clouds and a darker mass in the south.  We went to breakfast in Fort Sumner at a different restaurant.  We were going to wash clothes but the laundromat was closed on Sunday.

Hardy had the scope out last night and we saw Saturn and some nice star fields around Corvus.  The scope was setting on the window sill of the small cabins on our site.

Small clouds started moving through which was a cause for concern as we didn't know if it was going to block the sun during the eclipse but they started to move away right before the eclipse was supposed to begin . We parked out on the highway at the Seal Team 6 memorial site.  He rigged the scope up around 6:30 and I saw a little dimple on the sun about that time.  By the time he got it aligned and centered the eclipse had started and we started taking pictures.  The clouds had totally gone by 7:15 and we had an unobstructed view of the sun throughout the entire eclipse.  Hardy texted Steve and his brother Jan to let them know what was going on.  Steve couldn't get the eclipse where he was in Texas as it was too cloudy and Jan was too far north.  We got some great shots of the annular "ring of fire" on both of our cameras but mine seemed to do the best.  We used photography through a filtered 25 mm eyepiece. 
 
I took this as the eclipse was just beginning using my Canon camera held up to the view finder with a filter on the telescope.  I think it turned out pretty well.

In the beginning

 

The ring of fire

This was taken when the eclipse was total also using the Canon camera.












.This was taken as the moon was across the sun and coming out the other side.

Moving off the other side