Solar

Partial Eclipse

I was able to use a 1000x dimming ND filter in front of my telephoto lens with a 1.4x extender to get an image of the annular eclipse from the Delicate Arch in Arches NP. This was as close to totality as the eclipse reached from our location. Even though the moon is covering a large part of the sun, the amount of dimming was not really noticeable.

Venus Transit Through Clouds

A shot of Venus transiting the sun, taken on a tripod and using a 10 ND filter for safety. With the clouds it was hard to get a clean shot, but Venus is clearly visible, and even a few smudges of sunspots can also be seen. The manual lens doesn't report actual shooting parameters - the actual aperture was around f/8, using a Pentax Tele Takumar 400mm f/5.6 manual focus lens on an adapter as my 'scope'.

Partial Eclipse With Big Sunspot

An extra special treat while we were down in NM shooting the night skies was a partial eclipise. Although the level of totality was not very high (the dimming effect was just noticeable) the presence of one of the largest sunspot clusters in the last 25 years made the event extra special. I was able to capture it handheld using an ND 3.0 filter.

Mercury Transit

Mercury transits across the face of the sun, seemingly no larger than some of the small active sunspots.

July 2017, Eclipse Testing

A solar image from a test session to set up in preparation for imaging the upcoming eclipse.

A partial Sliver

...And this is what the diamond ring effect, too bright to stare at with the naked eye already, looks like once the solar filter is replaced.

The Moon Departs

The Moon moves off of the face of the Sun, revealing a section of sunspots.

Prominences

A fast exposure nearing the end of totality highlights some huge prominences on the edge of the sun prior to the diamond ring effect bursting out.

Totality!

A single exposure of the total phase, edited to bring out corona details. The bright star Regulus (actually a 4 star system consisting of 2 pairs of binaries) is seen in this image to the lower left, only about a degree away from the eclipsed Sun.

The Diamond Ring

As the eclipse is ending, the impossibly bright diamond ring effect bursts forth from the edge of the Sun.

Total Eclipse Composite

A composite image made from an HDR combo total eclipse image and 8 other individual images collected during the eclipse. This is, by its very nature, a manipulated shot, combining individual views of the eclipse that happened at different times into one image, but it does give a sense of how each of the distinct phases of the eclipse can appear very different. The partial phases were shot through a solar filter, while the diamond ring and totality images were imaged without any filter in place.

Mercury Transit, November 2019

With a snowstorm the night before, it seemed like I would not have a chance to image this event. Luckily, the storm started to clear out just as the last part of the transit was happening. This was shot on a fixed tripod, with the gimbal head, using the Sigma 150-600 at 600mm through a white light solar filter.