Hans Joachim Ilgen Solar Eclipse 2015

Solar Eclipse 2015 - My observations

2. My observations
Due to the excellent weather and activated by my preparations, four members of our family went to the observatory at 'Ludwigshöhe' near Darmstadt in the morning of March 20, 2015 at 9:00 clock.
But road ends approximately 500 m before the observatory, you can not go there by car. So I was lucky, that my equipment was designed minimal.
Once there, we were not alone. We found a crowded observatory. Even the free space in front of the Ludwig's tower offered only a few gaps where I could set up my tripod (see: fig. 31:).

Keine Angabe

Fig. 31: Camera is ready

Fig. 32: Sunbathing with safety goggles

In the crowd of amateur photographers a true material- and information-battle took place: I saw high-end cameras with long focal-length lenses, but they were positioned on weak and wobbly tripods. There were cameras with internal converter, IR-filter and Barlow-lenses to increase focal-length. Wireless remote releases were used and a wireless image transfer to a nearby laptop took the cake.

Besides, I listended to the following conversation:

You have to turn away your camera out of the sun, otherwise your live-view-sensor will die!
Oh, I can not find my sun!
Maybe your batteries for tracking are empty.
Can anyone help out with batteries?
No, my dear you should remove the cover in front of the solar-filter!

Go on to: 3. My experiences and results

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