2014 Solar Eclipse

On October 23rd, those of us in North America were treated to a partial solar eclipse or lunar transit. If you’ve been reading this blog you’ll know that I’m a space fangirl, so of course we headed out (down a veerrrrrry bumpy gravel road, haha) to watch, and it was spectacular!

First though, a photo of my tiny, sleepy puppy…

You might look at that photo and think that she is neither tiny, nor a puppy, but you’d be wrong.  She weighs a mere 34kg and is only 9 years old.

Moving on to the main attraction…

I don’t have a proper solar photography setup so I had to make do with half a pair of “eclipse shades” that weren’t nearly big enough to cover the front element of my lens.

The “dirty” spot on the face of the Sun was actually a massive and very active sunspot grouping.  It unleashed multiple strong solar flares, but unfortunately no very meaningful coronal mass ejections, which are what give us aurora.

You can view more photos after the cut!

Exposures vary because of my McGuyvered filter system…

I think at least 4 trains passed in the hour we were out there.

You can view the entire set here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/zaniacphoto/sets/72157648519806357