Wild Wildfire Skies

No, I was not using a special filter to capture these images. It was the actual look of the skies on the evening of Monday, September 4, 2017 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Smoke from wildfires raging 1,200 miles distant and more in the state of Montana and the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan tinted the skies over Iowa with a surreal yellowish-orange color. These two images were captured from the grounds at Noelridge Christian Church, with the above image looking northeast at 5:01 pm CDT, and the image below southeast at 5:05 pm. Despite the great distances of the fires, local respiratory advisories from meteorologists were issued for residents in Iowa. Nikon D7200 DSLR camera.

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Last Total Solar Eclipse Posting

Previously, I posted a 10-image sun sequence pic during the solar eclipse of Monday, August 21, 2017 as seen from Columbia, Missouri. The previous earliest eclipse phase time for that posting was at 12:15 pm CDT, a full half-hour after the start of C1 (first contact). From 11:40 am-12:15 pm I was being frustrated by the fact that I could not seemingly capture an image of the sun, evening using a 9-stop bracket on my Nikon D7200 DSLR camera. My back-of-camera monitor appeared totally black during these early capture attempts, and I could not understand what was causing this despite atmospheric haze and passing clouds. Even Adobe Lightroom did not appear to show anything captured (as it turned out I was shooting the sun with too fast of a shutter speed for the weather conditions that prevailed). Then, just for the heck of it, I selected one of the black images in Lightroom and moved the exposure slider all the way forward. I could see a faint image of the sun on it! I did this to all the "black" images and was able to use the best images (from bracketing). This now gave me a total of 13 images, with the first--the full sun at lower left of the combination image above--starting at 11:40 am, five minutes before C1. The white blob in the third image from the upper right is the last big flash of light from the sun before the diamond ring phase.

The settings info for each image, starting from the lower left: 1. 11:40 am CDT, 1/400 sec, f/5.6, 320 ISO, 300mm focal length; 2. 11:50 am, 1/160 sec, f/5.6, 320 ISO, 300mm; 3. 12:00 pm, 1/50 sec, f/5.6, 320 ISO, 270mm; 4. 12:10 pm, 1/400 sec, f/5.3, 320 ISO, 270mm; 5. 12:20 pm, 1/40 sec, f/5.6, 320 ISO, 270mm, 6. 12:30 pm, 1/100 sec, f/5.6, 400 ISO, 270mm; 7. 12:40 pm, 1/25 sec, f/5.6, 640 ISO, 270mm, 8. 12:50 pm, 1/5 sec, f/5.3, 640 ISO, 270mm; 9. 1:00 pm, 1/30 sec, f/5.3, 640 ISO, 270mm, 10. 1:05 pm, 1/13 sec, f/5.3 sec, 640 ISO, 270mm; 11. 1:12 pm, 1/30 sec, f/5.3, 640 ISO, 270mm; 12. 1:12 pm, 1/20 sec, f/5.3, 640 ISO, 270mm; 13. 1:12 pm, 1/50 sec, f.5.3, 640 ISO, 270mm.

Again, I selected the best of nine bracketed images to create each sun image.

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More Eclipse Images

This image is the same as the previous day's, but with time stamps below each element showing its progression more specifically. These captures took place at Columbia Cosmopolitan Recreation Center in Columbia, Missouri on Monday, August 21, 2017.

Single image of the sun, about one-third eclipsed. Time was 12:22 pm CDT. Imaged at 1/60th second at f/5.6, 320 ISO and 270mm focal length and a SeymourSolar 62mm solar filter. Haze and a thin veil of clouds prevented a hard focus lock.

End of totality and the sun has (unbeknownst to me) almost drifted out of the view of the camera. The sudden brightening of the "diamond ring" is illuminating surrounding clouds. 1/50th second at f/5.3, 640 ISO and 270mm focal length. Nikon D7200 DSLR camera.

Eclipse times for our location.

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August 21, 2017 Solar Eclipse!

The day we all were waiting for finally came. And it was definitely worth the wait! Living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa I had only a few destination options to view the total solar eclipse on Monday, August 21, 2017 because I only had that day off from work. One of the least desired was SE Nebraska, and the other SW Illinois. The better prospects were the Kansas City, Columbia and St. Louis areas of Missouri. 

I selected the Kansas City area on the early morning of the 21st, and our car of four passengers headed west on Interstate 80. At Grinnell, I received a text from my son indicating that the Columbia option was probably the better choice because of probable better weather. We backtracked a few miles then headed south for Columbia. As we neared Columbia, we researched areas there to view the eclipse and found the sprawling Columbia Cosmopolitan Recreation Center, which was actually promoting eclipse watching. As it turned out, the Columbia option WAS a wise choice. The Kansas City area experienced heavy traffic on Interstate 35 and a heavy cloud cover. Though Columbia was not itself devoid of clouds, it would allow wonderful views of the spectacle. 

The image above is a ten-shot combination of the eclipse progression, starting at 12:15 pm CDT (lower left), and ending with the total eclipse image at 1:12 pm. Each shot was the best selection from a Nikon D7200 DSLR 9-stop bracket. I used a 62mm solar filter for the partial phases threaded over the 300mm lens. Settings were f/5.3 and 640 ISO, manual focus. Haze and light drifting clouds prevented me from capturing a "hard" focus of the sun's disk. 

This iPhone 6-Plus image of the sun at 1:02 pm--ten minutes before totality--shows a sun halo, and a curious lens light flare shaped like a crescent (arrow), which the sun actually looked like at this moment.

1:12 pm and the beginning of totality. Closeup of the "diamond ring" effect. Solar filter was now off the Nikon camera. Image captured at 1/125 second at f/5.3, 640 ISO. Again, passing thin clouds prevented a clear focus.

1:12 pm. GoPro Hero 4 Silver video frame capture of totality. The image is skewed because I hastily mounted the suction cup to a slanted Playmate cooler. My bad!

1:15 pm. Members of our eclipse viewing group observe the ending moments of totality. iPhone 6-Plus camera. The experience was a satisfying and awesome one--even in a spiritual sense--but in the end many of my photography goals did not meet up to expectations...but there is another US total solar eclipse in seven years...maybe then! 

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Another Sun Test

Although weather forecasts for the upcoming total solar eclipse on Monday are not at all favorable for the whole of the Midwest, I conducted another solar filter test on Friday afternoon, August 18, 2017. For this test I used my old Celestron 94168 F60 (EQ) mylar solar filter, intended for use on a 60mm refractor telescope. The settings for my Nikon D7200 DSLR camera were: 1/1600 shutter speed at f/9, ISO 640 and 300mm focal length. I simply placed the solar filter over the lens by hand and searched for the sun's disk. The left image shows the suns with clouds, while the right image is unobstructed. Note the three sunspots at left center of each disk. Sun images actually look blueish with this filter, but I warmed their "temperature" in Lightroom to create the image above. This was a handheld exposure test.

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The Fast And Slow Of It

Distant and high altitude cirrus clouds (background) appeared non-moving in this northwest sky perspective, looking NW from Bowman Woods Park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Wednesday evening, August 16, 2017. In direct contrast to that, low altitude cumulus clouds--tinted reddish by the setting sun--virtually raced across the horizon from left-to-right. This image, shot at 7:35 pm CDT, was captured using Aperture Priority at f/11. Nikon D7200 DSLR camera.

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Boiling and Roiling On August 10

There was plenty of convection action on isolated cells in Eastern Iowa on the afternoon of Thursday, August 10, 2017. Vertical cloud growths did not require time lapses as they were very noticeable to the naked eye. The cell seen above was captured at 3:45 pm CDT, with the camera looking east from Douglas Drive at Alburnett Road in north Marion, Iowa.

This 3:55 pm panorama looks southeast from the grounds at Oak Ridge Middle School in Marion. The western edge of the line of storms (foreground) was about 7 miles to the southeast, while the eastern edge (background, left) stretched about 53 miles to near Delmar, Iowa.

Radar image of the photograph above it, with my position indicated by the target icon.

4:20 pm. Eastbound on Boyson Road, just west of C Avenue NE in Cedar Rapids. Boiling storm cell is located about 18 miles distant, near the town of Morley. Nikon D7200 DSLR camera.

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