Solar Eclipse ?

[GregMcKay]

Is anyone planning on using BYEOS for the eclipse? If so do you plan on building a "plan" for the different stages of the eclipse? i.e. partial, ballys beads, prominences, chromosphere????

I'm curious if anyone wants to share/collaborate on a plan?

[cjacobson]

I can't see this software working unless the exposure can be changed to less than 1 sec.  On my version(3.18) the minimal exposure time is just that.

If you have a work around, I am game.

I have downloaded the EOS Utility and it will probably work though changing exposure will take an eclipse time intervention.  On the other hand my Phottix Aion timer allows some minimal programming. cjacobson. 

 

[astroman133]

With BULB exposures (timed by BYE) the minimum exposure is 1 second, but the Shutter dropdown should have all the exposures from BULB down to 1/4000!

Have you looked at the manual? This is discussed on page 42!

[admin]

2 hours ago, cjacobson said:

I can't see this software working unless the exposure can be changed to less than 1 sec.  On my version(3.18) the minimal exposure time is just that.

If you have a work around, I am game.

I have downloaded the EOS Utility and it will probably work though changing exposure will take an eclipse time intervention.  On the other hand my Phottix Aion timer allows some minimal programming. cjacobson. 

 

This is absolutely FALSE!!!

You can choose shutter speed down to 1/4000th second and even faster!  Don't start rumors!

Regards.

[TheRealEleven]

On 7/3/2017 at 11:42 PM, GregMcKay said:

Is anyone planning on using BYEOS for the eclipse? If so do you plan on building a "plan" for the different stages of the eclipse? i.e. partial, ballys beads, prominences, chromosphere????

I'm curious if anyone wants to share/collaborate on a plan?

I came here to ask the same thing! I'll keep looking over the next couple of days, but I do have some charts with exposures recommended that I will end up making my own plan if all else fails. Good luck to us both!

[rottielover]

So let's go back to the OP (original poster's) question...

Yes I for one am planning not only on using BYE for the eclipse, but I plan to live stream the process at the same time so that people can see the eclipse on my preview window.

I live in MO outside of St. Louis in an area that will be getting about 53 seconds of totality.  I'm working on my plan, updating all the software on my laptop to the latest versions etc.

So far most of the advice I'm seeing is to avoid changing ISO and F stop settings and focus on shutter speed changes.  I think that advice was/is great for folks who are using a camera by hand or do not have access to such great software as we do.   So I too am open to suggestions on this front.

[fjeske67]

I'm interested in this as well as I just received a solar filter for my scope.

With BYE we should be able to change any of the camera settings but need guidance which are more optimal.

I hope to do trial runs for the next few days with my Stellarvue SV80 and T5i.

My plan was to do a shot every min as the total duration here near Chicago is too long for a video at nearly 3 hrs.  If BYE could loop we could do several different exposures just in case as we really have only one chance at this.

[astroman133]

First, BYE can loop to run a plan until you abort it, but is that really what you want to do?

These comments assumes that you are imaging from Chicago, and you are off of the path of totality far enough so that you only see a partial eclipse.

You do not need to shoot multiple exposures with different durations of the partially eclipsed sun. This is because the part of the sun that is visible will have the same brightness throughout the event. This means that the same shooting parameters (ISO and duration) are appropriate for the entire event. What I would suggest that you do is shoot the uneclipsed sun anytime (like today) with the same setup that you will use to shoot the eclipse to determine the correct exposure and then use that. Also, every minute may be too often. The math here is approximate and based on your saying that the event time is about 3 hours. If you shoot every 2.5% of the event you will have 40 images when it is done. 2.5% of 3 hours is about 4.5 minutes.

I would suggest that you shoot a few exposures before 1st contact. Then shoot an exposure every 4.5 minutes between 1st contact and 4th contact. If you know the exact timing between 1st and 4th contact you can adjust the 4.5 minutes accordingly. Finally shoot a few exposures after 4th contact. All the shots can be at the same ISO and exposure that you determined ahead of time. That is all you really need when you are not on the path of totality.

 

[fjeske67]

So I finally got a clear sky and took this shot:

Focus came OK given that Live View showed something more blurry.  I settled on 1/800" shutter at ISO400.

A big problem was solar tracking, however.  My Atlas EQ-G with EQMOD solar tracking just couldn't keep the sun in the center of the frame.  I need to find a better setting for that or else tracking it for 2+ hrs will be hopeless.

 

[TheRealEleven]

5 hours ago, fjeske67 said:

So I finally got a clear sky and took this shot:

Focus came OK given that Live View showed something more blurry.  I settled on 1/800" shutter at ISO400.

A big problem was solar tracking, however.  My Atlas EQ-G with EQMOD solar tracking just couldn't keep the sun in the center of the frame.  I need to find a better setting for that or else tracking it for 2+ hrs will be hopeless.

 

I got really good day time polar alignment using this method. I do need to tweak it some, I got some drift, but not much. I use a Sirius EQ-G, EQMOD bluetooth connection.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/astronomy-questions-answers/polar-align-in-daytime/

[admin]

Cool, thanks for sharing.

[rottielover]

Here is a link to my live stream testing I did today. Please view and give feedback. 

About 1/2 way thru I did the 2nd monitor mode I think that looks better but would like opinions please. 

Music is royalty free so I don't run into any issues there 

 

 

[jamescarlhunter]

Good exposure cheat sheet.

 

[rottielover]

Excellent.   I ran out today and grabbed a 25' HDMI cable.   I plan to setup a TV in the shade about 20' from my laptop and telescope and I just finished practicing with using the Full Screen Presentation window of BYE.   I setup the TV as a 2nd monitor and extended the display (not duplicate).   I put the full screen BYE window over on the TV and kept the main window on my laptop screen.

Works like a charm.  Now any little kids can view safely.

My wife has been placed in charge of hotdogs, brats, and hamburgers while I run the "show".     I'm headed out to a darksite tonight to get some good imaging done.  Later tomorrow once I've napped I'm going to work on the live stream software to see if I can put some kind of scrolling info across the top of the screen or maybe some link to NASA or something.

[rottielover]

Question,   I noticed a new check box to the far right of each capture plan line.  I did not see anything mentioned about it in the PDF from page 38 or so.   Can someone tell me that function real quick?

[astroman133]

If you hover your mouse pointer over that control, a tooltip is displayed that says that selecting that option will cause execution of the capture plan to suspend before that row executes. That means that the capture plan will wait at that point until you unsuspend it. Guylain added this feature to help people who are using BYE or BYN to image during the eclipse.

[admin]

58 minutes ago, rottielover said:

Question,   I noticed a new check box to the far right of each capture plan line.  I did not see anything mentioned about it in the PDF from page 38 or so.   Can someone tell me that function real quick?

As astroman133 said this is a suspend plan which requires a manual user intervension to resume again. 

You will also notice that it is now possible to disable a single line without having to set the number of exposure to 0 by clicking (toggle) the row number on the far left.

Regards,

[rottielover]

This is one of those "little features" that makes BYE so awesome. Thank you. This is going to make life so much easier.  

Im leaving for a darksite now. Later all!

[rottielover]

Well the countdown is on.   See you on the other side.

[rottielover]

Link to the recorded Live Stream. Watch me get mesmerized and forget to take the solar filter off the telescope ...

 

[s3igell]

Hopefully you'll keep this Video up until I get back to parts of the World with Real Bandwidth!!