The Partial Solar Eclipse of 2006

Well, the gods were smiling down on me for my second eclipse again - the clouds cleared just as maximum partial occurred allowing me to snap the image below. It did the same for the total solar eclipse in Cornwall a few years ago - magical. After watching this I kind of regretted not traveling to see it ... Ah well, considering the circumstances if was not going to happen anyway.

Taking this image did entail sneaking out the back into the carpark at work, but I think it paid off! It was taken through my filtered binoculars using a Canon A85 Powershot digital camera. Because of the amount of glass between source and CCD I broke the stacked image of 6 into RGB, and used only the green channel. Processing was done in a combination of K3CCD, Registax, and PixInsightLE. Registering the images proved difficult due to rotation between frames (I was holding this by hand). I altered the hue of the B/W image for a more aesthetic result. I'm rather pleased that the sunspot clusters were visible in the processed image.


Roll on 2008 - I might just have to brave the midges in Greenland ...