Partial Solar Eclipse - 4th Jan 2011

Woke up to thick fog here in Co. Waterford so gave up on any hope of seeing the eclipse. But just as I was leaving for work I got a call from a DAS member to say he'd found a clear spot to view from (thanks Eugene!!). So jumped in the car and drove thru the fog thinking 'there's no way this is gonna clear'. Amazingly though, in Old Parish just outside Dungarvan, I drove up the hill, out of thick fog into a suddenly clear and beautiful sunny morning! Eugene was already there having a great viewing session so I was really lucky to get the last 10 to 15 minutes of the eclipse. Great way to start the new year!

mjs wrote:

Dave_Lillis wrote:

Great stuff there Lads, you should send them into RTE, they were all over this eclispe on the radio this morning, I'd bet they'd be interested in these images for the 6 news.

Funny you should say that Dave, as I got a call from RTE this morning about speaking about it on the radio and asking about the sky conditions here in Kerry, however at that time I had cloud cover up to 10 degrees over the SE horizon.

Michael

well, to be honest I was not saying it out of the blue as rte rang Frank and I aswell, I just got a 15-20 second glance through a tiny gap in the horison cloud just before I went on air with them, so was torn between talking to them and grabbing a camera :silly:
to be honest I'm not a morning person so was still half asleep :ohmy: :laugh: :laugh:

The guys in rte were telling me they were making a conscious effort to contact as many parts of the country as possible, I have to say I was impressed with their efforts.


Thats a good stroke of luck there Bernie. looks like the southern end of the country had better luck.
Whatever about this eclipse, has anyone looked at the stats for the march 20th 2015 eclipse, its going to be a serious one !!

The Irish Times are looking for some photos guys, I referred them to here. Well done to those who saw it!

Seanie.

Loaded up the 6.2" refractor on Monday night, then headed up to the White Light pub in the Dublin mountains with my wife Valerie where Ken Finlay joined us. We had a nice look at Arcturus (golden coloured star) and Venus looked stunning at 112X with its 46% phase at about 8am. When Ken arrived, he suggested to go further towards Johnny Fox's pub / restaurant and we stopped at a junction on a magnificent sounding named road called Bally-edmund-duff road. We set up the telescope again at 8.40 which was the time of sunrise in Dublin, and waited for the eclipsed Sun to rise above very low distant cloud. And out it came at 8.46, a lovely rich yellow ball with a big black bite out of it. I reckon 40% of the Sun was being eclipsed by the Moon. We used image projection on a big white sheet and an enormous sunspot was eventually seen, which I reckon was as big as the Earth. The sunspot had been covered by the Moon. We kept observing until 9.25 when the Sun disappeared into thick cloud, and anyway the eclipse was ending at 9.26.
This was my 6th partial solar eclipse, and the lovely Valerie's 1st. The telescope performed most effectively with a 28mm eyepiece at 40X and 1 degree 8 minutes field of view. I am extremely grateful to God for allowing me to see this almost impossible to observe eclipse.

Yours, Aubrey.

Nice to talk to you last night and this morning Aubrey.

I did a bit of public outreach re the partial solar eclipse on the South Beach Greystones.
Fantastic sunrise greeted the families and individuals who turned up at the beach at 08:30
Random dog walkers were also delighted to be taken by surprise and handed eclipse glasses
to view the event. Smiles all around the place and several OH YES that's awesome kinda hallers and woops
of delight from kids and parents.






I left the connecting plate for the PST to the tripod at home attached to the large binoculars from the previous evening's session in Bray. Dam it , had to use gaffer tape to hold it on



Managed a sketch and an image from my mobile phone through the PST


Image taken at 09:16:58

Great view for most of the event, very happy people
Part of BBCSTARGAZING LIVE VIA ASTRONOMERS WITHOUT BORDERS

Deirdre Kelleghan
Vice Chair IFAS

Eclipse or not, thats a fabulous shot of the sunrise Deirdre.