2 Best Methods to Photograph Solar Eclipse, Annular Eclipse

Everyone could still keep the strong impression that the 2009 Solar Eclipse made, and many photographers, astronomers may have recorded the rare astronomy wonder. For all of us, an Annular Eclipse of the Sun is upcoming On Friday, 2010 January 15. Are you ready for the next astronomy wonder?

On Friday, 2010 January 15, an annular eclipse of the Sun is visible from within a 300-km-wide track that traverses half of Earth. The path of the Moon's antumbral shadow begins in Africa and passes through Chad, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, and Somalia. After leaving Africa, the path crosses the Indian Ocean where the maximum duration of annularity reaches 11 min 08 s. The central path then continues into Asia through Bangladesh, India, Burma (Myanmar), and China. A partial eclipse is seen within the much broader path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which includes Eastern Europe, most of Africa, Asia, and Indonesia.

Researchers say that although an annular solar eclipse is not as splendid as a total solar eclipse, it's still quite wonderful. In annular solar eclipse, the sun appears as a very bright annulus, which in Latin means 'ring', surrounding the outline of the Moon, giving the appearance of a 'Ring of Fire'.

The Solar Eclipse is not only a beautiful scene to normal people, but also a great chance for many photographers to record such rare astronomy wonders material. In order to let people photograph satisfactory solar eclipse photos, here are some helpful tips for you.

The simplest method of astronomy photography would be photograph with camera directly. Since long-focus lens of most cameras can take big solar pictures, it would be easy to take photography before total solar eclipse stage by putting filter in front of lens. And you can use camera to photograph solar in total solar eclipse stage. You need to make sure the whole solar eclipse process would be within the picture by keeping solar on the left of the picture at the beginning of eclipse and on the right at the end of eclipse since the beginning and the end solar position would be in great distance.

You can also use telescope to photograph. It would be better to assemble with equatorial platform and tripod with motorized tracking function.

Here are two basic methods:
I: Magnification Photography: Directly focus the camera lens to the telescope lens to photograph.
II: Direct Focus Photography: It needs to use digital SLR camera. Take off the camera lens and telescope eye lens and connect the camera with telescope to use telescope as camera lens. The key device for such photography would be the DG ring connected camera and telescope which can be bought from astronomical equipments store.

Besides, use DV with filter to photograph solar eclipse would also be a great way. DV usually can compare the correct automatic focus and setting exposure parameter. If not, you can set as manual setting of exposure parameter and set focus as infinity. As it is the continuous process for taking video, we just need to adjust the position of DV sometimes to make sure the solar at the middle of the screen after photograph begins.