Total eclipse of the heart (I mean partial eclipse of the sun lol)

Two astronomical extravaganzas in one weekend, how much more can one take! Firstly it was Omega Centauri and now a partial eclipse right in my own front lawn. This was supposed to be an annular eclipse, meaning that the moon is too far to fully obscure the entire disc of the sun, resulting in a ring of fire, rather than a total solar eclipse. However this was only viewable from the northernmost part of CA. From our location in Los Angeles, 86% of the sun would be covered by the moon. According to reports, LA has not had the moon take such a large bite out of the sun in a long time, with the last being an annular eclipse in 1992, that was highly anticipated but ultimately got washed out by clouds. To prepare for the eclipse, I ordered some eclipse shades off amazon.com and was all ready to pony out some cash to NorCal based Orion Telescopes and Binoculars for some Baader mylar filters for my C6. Alas that was not to be as they did not have those filters in stock. I could not justify buying glass solar filters as I don't think I will be using them frequently enough. The mylar ones are good and a tad cheaper! Will have to wait and see if I will eventually get those since they won't be shipping till well after the June 5th transit of Venus.

We were out for the day in Irvine visiting Pretend City (which incidentally is next to Meade Instruments lol) and then getting some groceries. Did not get home till 5pm. Good thing the eclipse started about 5.43pm, with the moon slowly starting to "nibble" away at the sun's disc. I tried shooting the eclipse through my wife's Kodak point and shoot and my eclipse shades without any success. Desperate, I cobbled together my 10x50 binoculars, two pieces of cardboard and my Paragon HD tripod to do solar projection. That too did not work out as well as I had hoped as the image formed was way too small. After fiddling around, I got my Kodak Z990 to take semi decent (albeit shaky) shots of the eclipse. Realizing that the only way I was going to get decent shots was to use the video capture/ photo capture mode, I placed the camera on my Orion Paragon tripod and shot the eclipse through eclipse shades. That was until the marine layer and clouds rolled in and create a natural filter. The end product was quite spectacular, at the peak of the eclipse at 6.38pm.The photos I got were pretty spiffy! Here are some.......

So what's up next....fortunately there will be a Transit of Venus in a couple of weeks time (June the 5th to be precise). This is when the shadow of Venus can be see traversing the disc of the sun! I have seen such a transit before from back home in Malaysia. I got good pictures of this using the solar projection method with my Celestron Cometron CO40. Wish I had my firstscope here.