It didn’t look good for anyone interested in seeing yesterday’s annular solar eclipse in the East Kootenay.

Thick cloud cover snuffed out the chance to see the rare phenomena for most areas until a sudden break occurred in Cranbrook.

College of the Rockies Astronomy Lab Tech Rick Nowell seized the opportunity to try and photograph the event.

“I hurried to the college and threw together an 11” Celestron telescope and just managed to catch a few shots at the end,” he said, outlining the effort required to capture the eclipse.

“Trying to find the stuff I needed, like a f/6 focal reducer, a visual back, the Crayford focuser. The tripod latitude angle bolts were loose—why did a student loosen that?  Set it for 49 degrees. Adjusting the finderscope on Mount Baker radio antennas.  Now attach the camera—the focus knob hits the end and still no focus.  Great, remove the Crayford, refocus on Mt. Baker, now focus the camera.  Hurray! It works,” he described.

“Finally, I put on the solar filter, I set it to track on the Moon, and it slewed fairly close.  Now find the shadow of the telescope on the ground, use the white filter box lid as a projection screen. The clouds were teasing me, trying to get the camera brightness levels set right.  It would dim, then it would brighten. I could barely see the dim histogram in the camera display, with the sun in my eyes.”

“So, this photo was the best. I even captured two solar sunspots,” Nowell explained.

The Saturday, Oct. 14 partial eclipse began starting at 9:11 a.m.. At peak, the Moon covered 67% of the Sun at 10:25 a.m.

Rick Nowell Photo

e-KNOW

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