Astrophotography

In 2012 Rich and I flew out to Chico California to image the 2012 Annular Eclipse. An Annular Eclipse is different from Total Eclipse in that the Moon is closer to us at this stage and thus does not fully cover the disk of the Sun.

In June of 2012 a very rare event occurred that was visible in the US, a transit of the planet Venus across the disk of the Sun. The next time this will occur will be in 2117. A friend of mine from Atlanta and I observed and photographed this event from a hang glider ramp on Lookout Mountain, just outside of Chattanooga, TN. My images were selected by NASA Astronomy Picture Of The Day as well as several other periodicals and blogs.

May 09, 2016 the panet Mercury transited the disk of the Sun. This was the first time since 2006. There are approximately 13 transits of Mercury each century. There will be another transit event in 2019. I photographed this event from my home at Lake Oconee, GA using an 80mm Lunt Solar Scope.

Inf August 21, 2017 we in the US were fortunate to be able to see a Total Solar Eclipse - notably names The Great American Eclipse. This eclipse was visible within a narrow path, Path of Totality, that spanned across the entire United States, passing from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts. The adventure started a week earlier. We positioned ourselves in St. Louis with plans to get where the weather took up. We eventually ended up in White House TN, just north of Nashville. We stumbled across this awesome family farm who was renting camp sites....it truly was one of the greatest visual events of my life!

The Sun is the star at the center of our solar system. The Sun is 93 million miles from Earth. Photographing the Sun is not simple and takes specialized filters otherwise great damage can occur to your eyes and camera equipment. I use a Lunt 80mm Ha telescope for most of my solar imaging. Its a great little scope. I have it mounted on Losmandy GM8 mount.