Gave myself lots of time to set up. In fact, I realized I’d have to do a meridian flip during the eclipse, so I made sure to do that before it started. I did a daytime polar alignment, worked out pretty well. My tracking software and mount didn’t want me looking at the Sun
Clouds, clouds, and more clouds… All of the planning and preparation went out the window as the clear sky we had on Sunday turned into high thin clouds Monday morning, and to lower thicker clouds as first contact was starting. Even saw a halo. There was zero chance of seeing Jupiter, or any stars let alone comet 12p/pons-brooks.
The first test shot showed a couple of small sunspots, but nothing to write home about like we had a couple of weeks ago.
We were eventually lucky enough to see totality, and it was a spectacular sight. My weather station showed that temperature had dropped from 20°C to 12°C by the time the disk was completely covered.
The following sequence had lots of missing data due to cloud coverage
I had intended to measure the darkness of the sky with my sky quality meter, but was too busy, and forgot all about it. It was dark though.
Special thanks to Silvia for letting me crash at her house for the night! Be sure to check out her time-lapse video of totality.
Speaking of time-lapse
Congratulations to Gianluca Masi and the Virtual Telescope project for another successful event.