Eclipse

I've been busy with work and life lately. Definitely not so busy that I don't have time to make blog posts, but add in a little writers block on top of feeling like I have so many things to say, post, share and do... that nothing happens. 

It's one of my many flaws. I suppose anyone reading this may know the feeling; you want to make something so big, the beginning isn't always very accessible. Either because you don't know where it is, or it gets shelved for a lack of time. It's the story of my life, it seems. 

In reality, nothing is that big. I just need to work on my execution. I do have a lot of thoughts and images to share, and I intend to get caught up. 

I made this timelapse of the eclipse in my little backyard. I set up a simple 400mm lens with a solar filter on a crop sensor camera (making it an effective 640mm), riding on star tracker mount I had aligned to Polaris the night before. It took one photo every 20 seconds while I took a walk out on the bluffs to experience it all in nature. 

I had planned to take the Westy to Southern Texas to experience totality, but as the day got closer, the forecast looked worse and worse. For what I was able to gather, much of that area was a bust. Still cool to see, but not the full experience I was looking for. To see that would have required me driving quite a bit further in even less time than planned, without a well researched destination. In the end, I scrapped it all and settled for the partial bit we had here in California. 

Still. Amazing to witness. 

The moment of peak coverage in Goleta, California. 
The black spot is a sun spot (you can see more of them in the video), and on the edges you can some granulation.