March 29th 2006 total solar eclipse report
| Coordinates of observing site |
Lat : 28 deg 14 min 05.2 sec North Lon :21 deg 30 min 16.0 sec East Altitude : 118 m |
| Duration of totality | 4 m 04 sec |
| Instrument used | Meade ETX 90 f/6.3 |
| Primary system (A Plan) |
Nikon D50 connected to a Toshiba M60 laptop with MAX DSLR software for automatic pictures taking |
| Backup plan (B Plan) |
Minolta X9 for manual pictures taking with Fuji Provia ISO 100 |
Some pictures of totality and eclipse site
Click here why I took only a handfull of pictures of totality
Almost all services were provided as:
Catering
Doing the final adjustements before first contact
A very partial view of the different instruments spreaded everywhere on the site.
Exposure : 1/500 sec
Site Eclipse City : Pop est. 12,000
Internet (Slow connection)
Discoteque
Fireworks
VTT rides
Folkloric shows until 3 hrs in the morning. :-(
A view inside my tent (#47), the matress and
sleeping bag were very confortable.
It was the first time I arrived on an eclipse site the night before the big event. That gave me the time to set-up my instrument and polar alignement.
Eclipse day :
Eclipse day:
5 minutes before totality, we note the the landscape has darkened notably.
Less than 3 minutes before totality
Les than 5 sec. before totality
Prominences at the begining of totality
Internal corona : Exposure 1/250 sec
Internal corona : Exposure 1/125 sec
Once my laptop booted I started the software MAX DSLR containing the automatic sequence to take 35 pictures during totality
Before the eclipse I was sure that I have switched my camera to PTP mode permiting downloading the pictures directly on my computer.
The application crashed twice when I pushed the button "connect" to be in idle mode until few seconds before totality.
Without losing time to investigate I switched to B plan (manual mode like the other eclipses) and used the DSLR to take pictures of the lanscape before totality.
Taking one of these pictures I realized that my DSLR was in "Mass storage" mode (Using the camera flash card) and realized why the program have crashed.
It's a bug the the programmer told me several months ago. I learned that this guy was observing the eclipse elsewhere in Lybia. He used the same application and worked flawlessly.
As 5 minutes remained until totality it was too late to come back the the original plan and decided to stay on backup plan and hope for the best.
Manual pictures taking went well until 90 sec. in totality when my Minolta blocked.
The most probable causes of that blocking during totality
1- Dust and/or
2- My camera battery
I will not make a drama because of my misfortune. There are things worse than that in the life. For example take a close look of what's happening in Darfour. .