Total Solar Eclipse August 1999

The last Eclipse of the millennium was hard to avoid - well, in terms of publicity anyway. The press, particularly in the UK, had been propagating ridiculous scare stories about viewing safety that had just about put off the nation. "Don't look directly at any time" they warned, despite the fact that the presence of one moon inbetween sun and earth acts quite effectively as a dimming agent.

It needn't have mattered. While the fear of blindness was everywhere to be seen, sadly the sun itself was not. The small portions of the UK lucky enough to find themsleves on the total eclipse path, were predictably also under a heavy blanket of cloud. As was the best part of Western Europe too. Eastern France, through Germany, Austria and well into Hungary were suffering from at best dark cloud, and at worst torrential rain conditions. I suppose we shouldn't have asked for more, it being the middle of August and all.

What about me?

Personally speaking, myself and fellow enthusiast Gain Lee, had been planning for this final Eclipse of the century for some time. Guessing that Britain would suffer from a poor summer, we'd originally planned on viewing from Eastern Europe. However, the quantity of equipment we wanted to take necessitated a drive, and one to Bucharest would have resulted in a two week trip.

In the end we settled on Eastern France, and Metz, a surprisingly large town with picturesque parks and decent bars. After driving ourselves and equipment all the way from West Yorkshire to Eastern France, we discovered the good weather was only going to last a few more, well, er, minutes. Checking the UK and French Meteorogical web sites we learned Metz and pretty much the rest of Europe were going to enjoy several days of heavy rain, and the only promising location was back near the Channel at LeHavre. Several hours later we found ourselves back at the coast, tired, and hotel-less. A neck-cramping night in the car beckoned.

August 11th 1999

We rose early, albeit hardly bright both in terms of spirits and weather. There were patches of blue, but the sky was dominated by dark cloud and there was no Sun to see. Confident we were still located in the most promising area to see the eclipse, we found a nearby turning off the motorway just northwest of the small town Yvetot, and about 8km south of the central path.

With only a couple of hours to go, other cars begun to turn off into the same area and join us. Plenty of eclipse glasses emerged, as did one Brit with the regulation pin-hole back-to-the-action equipment. Then again, the poor outlook didn't seem to matter as soon as Gain and I began to set up our equipment: visitors from France, England, Holland and further afield gathered around us and even began to take pictures of our gear!

The equipment

Gain had already photographed the total eclipse in Aruba with 35mm film through a telescope, and fancied trying something different. We had both recently become very interested in video astronomy, and decided this was the way to go.

Canon were generous enough to let us borrow their superb XL-1 high end pro-sumer DV Camcorder. We chose the XL-1 specifically because Canon makes an adapter which allows it to use standard Canon EOS 35mm lenses, and subsequently also our telescope adapters. However since the imaging CCD is so much smaller than a 35mm frame, all lenses are transformed into super-telephoto focal lengths! We were looking at a factor of about 7.5 times, which rendered our telescope focal lengths into monsters!

In the end we attached a Canon 35-350mm zoom lens with a 1.4 times teleconverter, which when fully zoomed in boasted an effective focal length of over 3500mm! This was sufficient to more than fill the frame with the Suns disk and in fact begin to pick out detailed areas. The XL-1 also boasted a 1394 FireWire port which allowed the digital video to be squirted straight out into a PC or other DV recorder for (hopefully generation-free) duplication and editing.

We mounted the XL-1 with EOS adapter, teleconverter and zoom lens onto a massive Losmandy G11 driven German mounting, and protected the imaging chip with a home-made filter, which was removed during totality.

We could check our video results using a small Sony broadcast monitor, which along with the driven mounts, was powered by a pair of car batteries, stepped down and smoothed using a Maplin 24 to 12V converter. We'd highly recommend this piece of equipment, as previous attempts at video astronomy had been marred by an irregular power supply from a single car battery. We additionally backed up the Canon XL-1's recorder by taking an S-Video output into a portable Sony mini-DV recorder. Ideally we should have used a firewire cable, but, erm, you've got to forget at least one piece of equipment!

Gain took control of the camcorder as I attempted to get some still photos. I used a Canon EOS 5 body attached to a Televue Genesis SDF 4in refracting telescope, itself mounted on a Losmandy GS8. The Genesis is a 540mm f5.4 instrument, which at prime focus on 35mm film produces solar images which are a bit too small. I doubled the image size using a simple two-times teleconverter, although the EOS 5 would only fire its shutter if it was slightly detached from the converter while attached to the telescope adapter. I opted to use Fuji Provia slide film which offered a good balance between fine grain and usable speed.

The experience!

As we set up, our increasingly blue sky began to disappear at a rate of knotts. However with nowhere better to go, we decided to stay and keep our fingers crossed. Cloud blocked the view of first contact, but as time went by, patchy areas allowed us to glimpse the increasingly blotted solar disk.

With literally a couple of minutes to go before totality, the sky around the sun suddenly cleared. It was uterly remarkable: all around us were dark rain clouds, but a small window opened to reveal the sun as totality approached! The sky eerily grew darker and stars emerged - we easily spotted Venus, but were too entranced to spot Mercury.

As the final sliver of sun disappeared behind the moon and the corona revealed in all its glory, the air was filled with screams of joy! It's hard to describe the beautiful sight of a total solar eclipse: this was my first, and despite being familiar with the images, nothing could compare with the real thing. It was so bright, with almost electric red, white and blue effects. The corona too was much larger than I expected to the naked eye, but viewing it through the telescope was nothing less than a revelation! Streamers were quite visible and it was so bright, even thorugh my Camera's screen. Hypnotised by its awesome beauty I fired off an entire roll of film at different shutter speeds and kept my fingers crossed.

Before I knew what had happened, my two minutes were up and the sun crept out the other side with a wonderful diamond ring effect. The experience was simply breathtaking. I turned around and saw about fifty people all stood there, mouths agape at what they had just seen. Almost seconds later, the disk was once again obliterated by cloud.

Paranoid as ever, we rewound our DV tape and replayed it through a small Sony broadcast monitor. Our joy and relief was indescribable as we saw our results: we had captured the entire event, along with clear views of solar prominences. Much to our surprise, we turned around to find the entire crowd had gathered around to watch our video! Reliving the experience was just wonderful!

Next time

While the 350mm lens with teleconverter and adapter produced a large image on DV tape, the tiny prominences begged for something a bit bigger still. Next time it would be nice to video the event using a slightly longer focal length lens for close up prominence views, but additionally back it up with a complete view of the disk and corona.

Also, if there's anyone from Canon listening, we'd love some kind of remote control for an EOS camera which allowed you to adjust the aperture and shutter speed without touching the body. A camera pointing straight up in the pitch dark is hardly the easiest thing to control, and besides, anyone who's into astrophotography knows that an accidental knock can result in your target disappearing off to one side, never to be found again.

Finally if you've never seen a total solar eclipse, I'd urge you to check out one of the next ones. A partial is nothing special, but a total solar eclipse has to be one of the most wonderful sights I have even been lucky enough to see.