Sun, Moon and Stars

© Fred Espenak

This is an astronomically exciting week! Not only do we have a Supermoon sneaking up on us on Thursday (it’s a New Moon, so won’t be visible), but it’s all set to blot out (most of) the Sun on Friday in a partial eclipse as well. As if that wasn’t enough, it’s also the Vernal Equinox, which means that, despite the vagaries of the weather, Spring has sprung. Yay!

The partial eclipse is a particular source of excitement for me and I’ve spent part of today playing with my telescope in preparation*. It’s been a while since I’ve used it, I’m sorry to say, and it took me some time to work out the alignment and focusing. I did manage to establish that I can mount my new camera on it though. Woo-hoo! 😀

* Yes, I do have a proper solar filter for the telescope, so I won’t be burning out my eyes

Now all I need to do is to work out the best settings to take some pics of the eclipse and hope that the clouds stay away! We did go down to Cornwall for the last total Eclipse in 1999, but it was cloudy where we were so we didn’t really see much, unfortunately.

I did, however, manage to get some pics of the Venus Transit in 2004:

and somewhere, on 35mm film, I have some pics of sun spots. I might have to try and find those. I’m also planning to shoot some star trails in Cornwall next month, weather permitting 🙂

So, here’s hoping that Friday morning will be bright and cloudless and I can manage to take some nice snaps of the sun failing to shine 😀

Oh, and, of course, there’s the Tarot Blog Hop on Friday evening as well ;D