[ATMoB-discuss] This Monday's partial solar eclipse and a visit to the Beijing Planetarium

[Bruce Berger]

Thanks Mario, and congrats on your accomplishment at the MMS, 

I went to a telescope distributor today, and though the telescopes were of
considerably lesser quality that I would buy, I did pick up a half dozen
pair of eclipse glasses. I took a sun shot through one of them today and
think I can make that work if I can get the camera to focus at infinity.
I'll practice tomorrow with that method and also fashion some sort of a
projection system.

I did go to the Ancient Observatory today (Saturday) and will post some
pictures later. The instruments there are pretty interesting and I want to
read up a bit to see how they were used. I was a bit disappointed because
they are renovating the interior museum and we could not get in, but that
should be finished before my next trip in May. I also picked up a few astro
novelties that I'll ask to show at the next meeting.

Sunday it's on to the Great Wall and Ming's tomb, then Monday it's the
eclipse and a half day at the office then the long flight home. Could
someone please shovel my driveway before Monday night? Donna tells me we got
18" of white stuff. ;-)

Bruce

-----Original Message-----
From: Mario E. Motta [mailto:mmotta at massmed.org] 
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2007 7:28 PM
To: Bruce Berger
Cc: atmob-discuss at atmob.org; 'wangxiaoyi'
Subject: Re: [ATMoB-discuss] This Monday's partial solar eclipse and a visit
to the Beijing Planetarium

Unless you can get something to act as a filter, then all images will be
badly overexposed, likely damage the chip or camera as well.
So.. build a pinhole camera projection, and take images of the projected
image, just need cardboard and a small hole.

Mario

Bruce Berger wrote:
> As luck would have it, I'll still be in Beijing for the 3/19/07 02:30 
> UT partial solar eclipse, which will start at 09:30 here and last 
> almost 2 hours. I have a simple digital camera with me - no filters. 
> What kind of advice can the group offer about photographing the event? 
> I'm in the 40% zone. I'm hoping for what is a rare day of clear skies 
> here, but if the air has its usual tinge of smog then that may be filter
enough.
>
> While I have your attention, I visited the Bei Jing Tian Wen Guan
> (Planetarium) last Saturday and posted some pictures here - 
> http://atmob.org/gallery/showgallery.php?id=53. I also went to the 
> Beijing Ancient Observatory, supposed the oldest in the world, but we 
> got there too late to be admitted. I took some photos from outside, 
> but plan to return there today (Saturday) and will post some pictures in a
new gallery then.
>
> Bruce Berger
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