Solar Eclipse !!!
Yes, I got my very first astronomical photograph! It is the 2010 Jan 15th's solar eclipse!I knew the eclipse will happen on 15th Jan 2010 and marked my calendar and got my camera ready for this. The eclipse started at around 3.02pm and ended at around 5 pm. It was the longest eclipse ever happened, and if I missed it, I’ll have to find a way to keep me alive until the next millennia. Because it will only happen once in a thousand years!
How I photograph eclipse? Simple, with proper filter and a digital camera will do the job pretty good. I used two layers of the floppy disk’s magnetic disk as my filter. However, I found I was able to view the eclipse by using one layer of the magnetic disk.
Before I continue to describe how I did it, I must state down the warnings:
WARNINGS !
1) Do not stare at the sun with naked eyes without a proper filter. Your eye(s) could be damaged!!
2) Do not point your camera to the sun without a proper filter. Your camera will be damaged!!
3) Do not look through your camera viewfinder without any filter!!!!!
And finally, you shall perform the steps I mentioned here with your own risk.
Ok, what I did was to cover my lens with these magnetic disks as shown below:
I have some numbers of un-wanted 3 ½ in floppy disks. A little force applied to the disk and the magnetic disk can be easily taken out from the thin cover. Due to the lens diameter is huge, I use a magnetic disk to cover the lens to prevent any light leakage, and cover the middle hole with another magnetic disk as shown above.
Because I have only 70mm zoom lens, the size of the sun capture in my original file is just a peanut size. I have to crop 100% in PP in order for me to obtain a viewable picture of the eclipse.
I followed the whole eclipse event from the beginning till the end, and I am amazed by the wonder of the nature.
I captured a total of about 100 pics of the eclipse and made it into a stop-motion movie as shown below:
Now I know the moon circulate around Earth. :p