The 8 April 2024 Total Solar Eclipse Experience: Part 2

This is the second blog post about the April 8th 2024 total solar eclipse that was witnessed by hundreds at Royal Botanical Gardens (Canada) in Hamilton, Ontario. I had the privilege of being the interpretive lead for the event, and was able to provide my own telescope for people to view the partial phases of the eclipse in safety. A previous blog post described the preparations for the event.

Monday 8^th April started out as an inauspicious looking day. The weather forecast was largely for cloud in the Hamilton area, and everyone was feeling a little pessimistic as to whether we would see anything other than a great big shadow in the afternoon. I arrived at the RBG Arboretum around 11:00 AM to start setting up my telescope and to get a feeling for the space in which the audience would experience the event.

One of the wonderful RBG volunteers taking a turn looking at the partial solar eclipse through the 5″ telescope.

My little 5” Meade Terabeam Maksutov Cassegrain telescope went together very quickly, and I did an approximate north alignment of the German equatorial mount, but on a completely cloudy day that kind of thing is iffy at best. I must admit that as an amateur astronomer I’m not terribly interested or capable of doing alignments. I have never been really able to get a good alignment on my telescope mounts. I have a lovely EQ 6 mount that is currently underutilized, and the smaller, beaten-up black mount (is an EQ4? I don’t know) that I use for the Mak-Cas. I set everything up, and was satisfied that it was going to be a workable telescope for public viewing. Unlike most 5” Meade telescopes, this telescope has a custom 2” optical back, which allows for 2” eyepieces to be fitted, as well as full frame DSLR cameras. For the eclipse I set up a 2 inch eyepiece so that the public could view the eclipse through the telescope when safely fitted out with an aluminized mylar solar filter

Shortly after noon I got a call from our communications specialist Cassandra who wanted to see if I could come to a different part of RBG and do an interview with the CBC. RBG owns and manages a large set of properties, and the prospect of having to drive for 15 minutes from site to site just before the eclipse started did not necessarily appeal. However, I thought I had better do my duty as Director of Science, responsible for science communication. When I reached the gardens in Hendrie Park, I found that the Ontario Science Centre had set up an interpretive table and were working with grade 12 students on interpreting the eclipse for the public. A CBC video crew was also there to transmit their impressions of the eclipse and the Ontario Science Centre efforts. I did two short interviews with the CBC crew about 20 minutes apart, and then popped back into my car and headed back to the Arboretum. While I was on the road to the Arboretum the eclipse had started. I was back at the Arboretum about 10 minutes later. At this point things were still completely cloudy.

I started working with the telescope to see whether I could catch any kind of glimpse of the eclipse, and I was also equipped with eclipse glasses. It was some time before the clouds started to show some blue and break up, but they did. About 10 or 15 minutes before totality we started seeing good views of the sun through light, high cloud. There were even breaks where some parts of the sky were completely clear. The clouds were moving quickly, and it made for a very dramatic atmosphere, would we or would we not see the eclipse in totality?

People started to line up to view the partial eclipse with the telescope, and there were a lot of very positive comments about that experience. A couple of nice sunspots made the view of the sun more interesting than a non decorated solar disk would appear.

The partial solar eclipse digiscoped through the 5″ telescope with an iPhone 12. The green object is an artifcatual internal reflection.

Just before totality, the clouds opened up and while there was high cloud during totality from our point of view we had a pretty good view of totality. It only lasted 87 seconds in the arboretum, a very short experience. But, it was thrilling, and I was able to get a few good photographs using a handheld Nikon camera and a fifth 150 to 500mm telephoto lens without filter out totality.

After totality and the sun burst through again there was just a lot of ooohs and awwws, and some applause, as everyone put their eclipse glasses back on and thought about the experience they had just had. Over the next hour I continued to offer viewing through the telescope, which was convenient but did need to be realigned manually every couple of minutes, as I did not have a motor drive working. While someone inconvenient it did work, and it meant I had to be on hand to make sure that people were looking at the sun safely. I should note that I have a nice 60 mm Coronado Solar Max Hydrogen alpha telescope, but without a mount tracking the sun I’ve found it too complicated to used for a public event like this.

Totality in Hamilton, Ontario!

I took a few more photographs of the sun with a 300 mm telephoto lens with a solar filter on it, and as the sky lightened up people gradually started drifting off. By the time the eclipse was completed the vast majority of people had left for home.

Eclipse-watchers in the RBG Arboretum, chilling beside firepits!

This was an exciting total solar eclipse despite the clouds. The crowd was happy, the views were good even with high cloud at times, and it ranks up with the experience I had in 2017 of a total solar eclipse viewed in Missouri. That was a longer totality, but the environment was quite different. Both were worthwhile. I hope that if anyone has an opportunity to view a total solar eclipse they will make it a priority. While not common, these do not have to be once in a lifetime experiences if you are willing to travel.

Safe viewing!

The 2024 Total Solar Eclipse, Part 1

Observing the 8 April 2024 Total Solar Eclipse at the Arboretum of Royal Botanical Gardens (Canada) in Hamilton, Ontario.

The total solar eclipse of 8 April 2024 that swept across North America caused an enormous public and media sensation. Millions of people were able to take in this beautiful natural phenomenon.

Here at Pine River Observatory (which is both virtual and portable) I’m going to post a couple of blog entries about my experience with the 2024 eclipse. I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in preparation for and leading the programming of a visitor experience for the eclipse at Royal Botanical Gardens (Canada), in Hamilton, Ontario, where I serve as Director of Science. In this first blog post describe the preparations for the event, which was held in the Arboretum of Royal Botanical Gardens (Canada) on the afternoon of April 8th.

Preparations for the event actually began about three years ago. I had traveled to the United States to witness the 2017 total solar eclipse that was sometimes called the Great American Eclipse. I joined friends south of St. Louis, MO, and experienced my first total solar eclipse. I also had the honour to serve as interpreter and observation guide for the group, which included members of The Explorers Club, St. Louis Chapter.

Members of the St. Louis Chapter of the Explorers Club and my little telescope set-up watching the 2017 total solar eclipse in Missouri.

The 2017 eclipse was a chance to prepare solar observation telescopes and some camera equipment to record the event. That event went pretty well, and I was excited to capture a variety of images. I also demonstrated that my small telescope, a 5 inch Meade Terabeam Maksutov-Cassegrain OTA with a two inch Jim Weggat optical back, performed very well for visual observations and photography when equipped with a mylar solar filter from Kendrick.

One of my telephoto images of totality in 2017.

In 2021 I first started bringing the 2024 eclipse to the attention of the interpretive and planning staff at Royal Botanical Gardens (Canada), with information about the path of totality and its duration. The Arboretum at University of Guelph was just inside the path of totality, with eclipse websites indicating 87 seconds of totality could be expected there. It was not hard to work with online ephemeris sites and get the direction and the elevation expected for the sun and moon at totality. This would be just about southwest, at 45° elevation.

Serious planning for the event at the Arboretum began in mid 2023, when our director of business development and I started to discuss just what was practical and possible on the day. While the astronomical portion of the eclipse was very predictable, the wildcard in all of this was the weather. We were expecting a 60% probability of being clouded out on the day of the eclipse. Historical weather information, however, is proving to be somewhat unreliable in the era of climate change we are now experiencing. The two days before the eclipse the weather turned out to be cloudless and beautiful. Of course, we did not know this in our planning.

Prior to the eclipse itself RBG organized a presentation by eclipse chaser David Makepeace, of Toronto, a videographer who has identified himself as The Eclipse Guy. David has traveled the world many times to take in eclipses, and gave a wonderful presentation on eclipse chasing at RBG two weeks before the event itself.

We also teamed up with two other institutions in preparation for the eclipse. The Ontario Science Centre in Toronto included RBG in some of its own planning, and sent a team to RBG for the day of the eclipse. This was done in part because the Ontario Science Centre was to be outside of the path of totality. The other partner was McMaster University, which made the wonderful donation of several thousand eclipse glasses to RBG for distribution during our programming. In total McMaster University had over 600,000 pairs of eclipse glasses prepared and distributed free in Hamilton to give people a chance to observe the eclipse in safety.

To set up for the eclipse, it was decided that the Arboretum on the North Shore of Cootes Paradise Marsh would be the best place for an RBG eclipse viewing. It’s not that the Arboretum is anything particularly special, but it does present a large grassy area with a good view to the southwest. Our food services department set up a food truck, and our operations and events people set out chairs, tables, and even fire pits across the Arboretum so that visitors could relax and enjoy the event in style.

I decided to set up a couple of cameras and my five inch telescope 5 inch telescope so that people could take a look at the eclipse in its partial phases through the filtered telescope. On 7th of April, the day before the eclipse, I set up all of my equipment in the Arboretum and did a practice run with solar imaging, producing a decent visual light image of the solar disk.

The sun’s disk on the afternoon of 7 April 2024, just 24 hours before the total solar eclipse was to begin. Taken at the RBG Arboretum with the Terabeam telescope and a Nikon D5100 at prime focus.

I disassembled the equipment and packed it back up into my car for the overnight wait, and then arrived at the Arboretum around 11:30 on the morning of 8th April. It took a while to set up the equipment, but I decided to do a very simple thing with my telescope. Critical to any observed observations with a telescope is the telescope mount. In my case I have an old mount of about an EQ3 size (I’m not even certain), and I decided I was going to use it simply as a manually-moved German Equatorial manual mount. I made a rough north alignment, and then set up the optical tube assembly, the mylar solar filter, and eyepiece.

For camera equipment I had a Nikon D 7000 with a 150 to 500mm telephoto lens and yellow plastic solar filter. I used the handheld camera to take pictures of the sun and moon at various times. At totality, I removed the filter so that I could get photographs of the totality event.

And that was about it. I set up my relatively simple telescope, and during the day I was aided by several RBG volunteers, a wonderful group who come out to help at nearly every event. The wait was on to see if we would get an eclipse, because early on the morning of the 8th of April the weather forecast did not look very good. We had solid cloud until at least 1:00 PM, with totality scheduled for about 3:20 PM.

I’m going to pick up the story of the actual eclipse event in our next blog post. I’ll review the programming and experience of eclipse day, observations and the interactions with all of the public who joined us on the event, and share some photographs. We had at least 400 people attend. It’s not giving anything away at this stage to say that we did see a wonderful eclipse, the clouds cooperated in a rather dramatic fashion, and it was my impression everyone was very excited and satisfied that day.