Wednesday, August 23, 2017

View of Mercury - Total Solar Eclipse 2017




I want to lay a big shout out to fellow YouTuber and Subscriber ColoradoCamper for noticing that I had captured a glimpse of the Planet Mercury in my Video of the 2017 Eclipse. I had no idea that I had captured the tiny planet. Being in close orbit to the sun, Mercury is difficult to see. I was so excited to have captured it. In this video, I isolated and froze a number of frames where the planet showed up well.   

I was fortunate enough to be in Nashville Tennessee the weekend of 21 August 2017 and made sure to schedule time to see the eclipse. The eclipse was viewed from the Smith County Welcome Center, located at mile marker 267 on Interstate 40, between Nashville and Knoxville, TN. This rest area serves both East & West bound traffic and was very convenient. In addition to the regular parking for tourists, there is 'Angler' parking by the Caney Fork River. The Caney Fork River is beautiful and provided a great distraction while we waited for the eclipse. This location was right on the center line for totality and afforded an exceptional view. We experienced 2m39.5s of totality! We were there at 7:30Am and it was already almost filled to capacity. They closed access later in the morning. From the parking lot was great access to the Caney Fork River which provided a wonderful diversion while we waited for the eclipse.

As far as numbers go, here they are:
Lat.: 36.1381° N
Long.: 85.8044° W
Time zone=UT1-5/EST/CDT
Total Solar Eclipse
Duration of Totality: 2m39.5s
Magnitude: 1.015
Obscuration: 100.00%

Event
Date
Time
Alt
Azi
Start of partial eclipse (C1) : 
2017/08/21
12:00:38.0
63.6°
154.2°
Start of total eclipse (C2) : 
2017/08/21
13:29:06.5
63.9°
204.4°
Maximum eclipse : 
2017/08/21
13:30:26.4
63.8°
205.1°
End of total eclipse (C3) : 
2017/08/21
13:31:46.0
63.6°
205.8°
End of partial eclipse (C4) : 
2017/08/21
14:55:41.6
52.1°
238.4°

The video was taken with three iPhone 6 with inexpensive 8x and 12x lenses from Amazon. The 8x lens has a nice case that made it easy to align the lens, but the lens was a little cheesy. The 12x lens was better and had a universal adapter (clamp) that was a little harder to keep aligned. To reduce light, I cut a hole in the lens caps leaving a rim around the edge to hold the filter in place.  I used the material from my fake eclipse glasses I got from Amazon.  To further reduce light and help focus, I created a smaller f-stop by placing a washer with a hole much smaller than the lens under the cap. As you can see, the results were not bad for a cheesy iPhone lens. This would have been much better with a real camera. Around 12x or is needed to make it really look good.


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