Orwell Astronomical Society (Ipswich)
Solar Partial Eclipse, 25 October 2022
On 25 October 2022, a solar partial eclipse was visible across the whole of the UK. Seen from Ipswich, the event began at 09:07:51 UT and lasted for one hour and 47 minutes, with maximum eclipse of 28% occurring at 10:00:25 UT. Members of OASI reported observations as follows.
The weather forecast for the eclipse was promising, with the prospect of sunny intervals and broken cloud. I set up my equipment in the back garden: a Coronado PST Hα telescope on a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer mount and a QHY5L-II colour camera.
A major prominence was visible on the south-west solar limb (indicated by the arrow in the images below) with several smaller eruptions elsewhere on the limb. I first noticed the Moon encroaching upon the solar disc within a couple of seconds of the start of the eclipse. I then began to record video files for later processing. As the end of the eclipse approached, there was increasing cloud cover, so I curtailed my imaging. However, I was still able to undertake occasional visual observations until the end of the eclipse.
Two of my images are below. LHS: taken at 09.28 UT, over-exposed to highlight prominences. RHS: taken at 10.04 UT, close to the time of maximum eclipse. Click on the image and view at full resolution to see the prominences around the limb.
I used my Carl Zeiss Telementor instrument to observe the partial solar eclipse. The telescope has a 63 mm OG of 840 mm focal length. I used a 25 mm Huygens eyepiece giving x33 magnification.
The Telementor.
09:10 UT, shortly after first contact.
10:00 UT, close to maximum eclipse.
At the relatively low altitude of the Sun during the eclipse, the view from my large telescope is partially obscured by the lower edge of observatory dome. I therefore used a portable 90 mm, f/4.9 Megrez refractor with Sony A7S camera. I used an additional small, time-lapse camera to show a wide view of the sky, illustrating the degree of cloud cover. In the video below, the wide view forms an inset to the main image. Both cameras ran at one frame every 10 seconds but they were not synchronised.
The sky on the morning of the eclipse was a lovely blue hue, but there were warnings of increasing cloud cover later. I took time off from the archaeological dig at the Roman site at Fordham near Colchester, where I volunteer. Surprisingly none of my archaeological colleagues were aware of the eclipse; however, once it started, they were delighted to look through a viewing filter that I had brought.
I set up my camera (a Canon 100D with 18-400 mm lens set at 400 mm, f/6.3, 1/100 s exposure) with solar filter just in time to catch the start of the eclipse. As the maximum eclipse came and went, dark clouds approached from the west. They began to obscure the Sun just as I was about to complete photographing the event (the last image in the montage below shows considerable cloud). Seconds later, the clouds caused the filtered image in the camera to go black. Using my phone camera, I took a last shot of the Sun, the Moon no longer obscuring it, as dark clouds rolled in.
The observing site.
Montage.
Dark clouds at the end of the eclipse.
Taken with an iPhone 8 at the eyepiece of a 114 mm Newtonian reflector. Sunspots are visible towards the top right and bottom left of the solar disk.
A montage taken from Kirton using a Skywatcher 200 Newtonian with Bader white light filter and Canon EOS500D camera. ISO 100, 1/100 s exposure. The IR blocking filter has been removed from the camera, resulting in the images having a pink hue.
See Fred Espenak's eclipse web site eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html