Trevor Gilpin took his ETX Astro telescope to France, complete with field tripod, camera adapter and Canon EOS. Here is his story and a couple of his pictures.
ECLIPSE '99 - CARROIX CENTRE
Having recently returned to a boyhood hobby by purchasing an astronomical telescope from those very nice people at Green Witch (no I'm not getting paid to write this) and never having seen a total eclipse, just a vague memory of some smoked glass at junior school, I leapt at the chance of going to the Carroix Centre with Green Witch and Tastes of France Holidays. My wife agreed to come along hoping she could organise an escape committee to do some shopping.
We boarded the coach at the end of our road, which was pretty neat, and it was the first time we had been on a coach crewed by the Everly Brothers, Phil was driving and Don was the courier. It was an eclectic bunch on the coach, one of the party had completed the Times Crossword by South Mimms while others were struggling with a half completed Telegraph until chucking it overboard in mid-Channel. During the journey we also somehow managed to acquire a bunch of itinerant musicians.
We crossed the Channel with a 100 foot cloudbase, heavy rain and a very heavy heart. My wife was making alternative plans to return home without me if it was going to be weathered off, I would not have been good company on the way back if this all came to naught. It rained heavily overnight and the next morning dawned with a solid overcast. After breakfast we set off in the coach for the observing site, right on the centreline of totality at the Carroix Centre. Heavenwards a miraculous clearance started during this twenty minute drive. Small patches of blue sky giving way to vast areas of blue with eventually the sun shining out of a cloudless blue sky. The French were taking the eclipse seriously, every lay-by and field entrance had parked cars with people at picnic tables with the wine bottles already opened.
On arrival at the observing site the telescopes were set up and we watched the gathering darkness, the strangest light imaginable. The hens took shelter under the bushes and the cockerel crowed. A white card held under a tree showed many images of the partially eclipsed sun, where the gaps between the leaves acted as pinhole cameras. The temperature fell and the wind increased.
Just before totality came Baily's Beads, the sun shining between the mountain peaks on the lunar limb, and then the Diamond Ring as the last rays of the sun reached the Earth. The sun's Chromosphere became visible and then the Prominences as pinky red streamers emanating from the surface and finally the Solar Corona, the ghostly white halo of the sun's outer atmosphere, only visible during a total eclipse. The planets Mercury and Venus and some stars came out. Then Nature seemed to say, well if you liked that, we can run it all again in reverse as the Moon started to uncover the sun once more.
My instant reactions were that the total eclipse was the most spectacular natural phenomena that I had ever seen in my whole life and that it was also the shortest two minutes eight seconds I had ever experienced. I didn't know whether to look around at the local scenery, look through my telescope, look through the telescope's camera viewfinder and take a picture, or look at the sun, stars and planets with my naked eye, or use my other hand held camera. I'm so glad that I ignored the advice which said if it is your first eclipse, just look at it don't try to photograph it, as by sheer beginner's luck almost all of my pictures taken through the telescope came out. I had the whole sequence of the Moon's disc covering and uncovering the Sun and four pictures of the Solar Corona showing some Prominences and one of the Diamond Ring.
The post eclipse champagne lunch, with a little live music (that's why we brought the musicians) went so well that one of our party fell backwards off his chair without spilling even a tiny piece of his second helping of pudding. The second most interesting natural phenomena I had seen that day.
The dinner dance in the evening held at the Village Hall at Romescamps, again featuring our own musicians, and large quantities of Vin Rouge topped off the day quite nicely. I have promised that photographs of this will not even be released on the internet.
I thought it was a perfect trip, the organisation through Tastes of France Holidays was superb. Neil and Lesley did a wonderful job, and Neil's erudite briefings on what we would see and the safety aspects were excellent. Finally we have to thank Mother Nature for arranging the weather, that couldn't have been better either.
Anyway I'm hooked, see you in Madagascar on June 21st 2001 and bring your camera. My wife? She loved it and didn't bother with the escape committee and only did a little light shopping in Aumale.
