A Tale of Two Transits - The Annular Eclipse
| 2012 will be a memorable year astronomically speaking as it is the last time this century that a transit of Venus will be visible from the Earth. As if that wasn’t enough, two weeks before this historic transit occurred, another “transit” of sorts occurred: an annular eclipse of the Sun! | |
I had the opportunity to travel to New Mexico to witness and image both spectacles. My journeys started on May 19, 2012, the day before the eclipse. I flew to Phoenix, Arizona, and drove to Magdalena, New Mexico, to meet with a couple of friends from Cincinnati, John and Graham. While I flew for this trip, John and Graham drove and generously took my equipment with them, sparing me the hassle and expense of transporting that equipment from Ohio to New Mexico. |
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The seven-hour drive took me through the picturesque scenery of mid Arizona and New Mexico. Magdalena is about twenty miles due east of the VLA (Very Large Array) on Highway 60, so I had a sneak preview of the array on my way to meet my friends. I arrived just before dark, and my friends and I drooled at the gazing prospects from even just the parking lot of the motel. We went to bed relatively early with visions of dark sky sites dancing in our heads. |
| The following morning, we had a nice big brunch at a local eatery. John entertained us and everyone else at the restaurant with a salt-shaker balancing trick. From there, we drove to our designated meeting point at a turnoff to the Magdalena Ridge Observatory from Highway 60, where we met another Cincinnatian, Jeff, and his parents. After a short wait and photo-op we were joined by staff from New Mexico Tech, and we joined the convoy up Mt. Baldy to the Magdalena Ridge Observatory. |
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At the observatory, we were given the VIP treatment by the staff of New Mexico Tech and the MRO: we were set up at an area near the site of the interferometer (still under construction), which according to the NMT staff was selected by astronomers for the best views to the west. We were also provided extension cords and power strips by the staff to ensure continuous operation of our equipment. |
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| I set up my equipment, a Borg telescope with a Lunt Hydrogen-alpha filter system atop a Celestron CG-5 AS/GT mount. Once that was properly setup and tracking, I helped Jeff initialize his setup, a Lunt dedicated Hydrogen-alpha telescope atop a Meade LX-55 mount on loan from a fellow club member. |
 Image by Tony Giancola. |
 Image by Tony Giancola. |
We initially dodged a few clouds early on in the afternoon, but they eventually cleared, allowing us some nice views of the solar disk as we waited for the main event. We also used that time to share views of the Sun with any curious visitors. I continued my outreach as the Cincinnati visitors enjoyed tours of the MRO main observatory and telescope. |
| Around 4:00 we were treated to a nice barbecue, with hamburgers courtesy of Gene Turner of Rancho Hidalgo. The dinner also served as the venue for talks by MRO and NMT officials. Shortly afterwards we adjourned to our telescopes to prepare for the main event. |
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I was pleased with the performance of the CG-5. I had only roughly polar-aligned it, with the mount pointing roughly north, and the latitude adjustment to the approximate latitude of our location. Even with that the Sun never drifted off the field of view of the scope all afternoon. And though I had to periodically re-center the image during the eclipse, I never lost the Sun all through the event. |
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As first contact for the eclipse approached, I swapped out the eyepieces on my scope with an Imaging Source webcam, and captured a couple of test shots. Around 6:30, as I was checking the live video feed, I was a little dismayed to see a tiny portion of the sun cut off, like something had intruded into my optics. As I started to ponder what could cause this obstruction, it suddenly dawned on me: “FIRST CONTACT!” I yelled that out, and Graham quickly relayed that message to the crowd that had gathered by then. Graham proudly pronounced me “the winner” for having first identified first contact. As I embarrassedly thought about having mistaken the event for an optical obstruction! |
As cries of “First Contact” went around the crowd, I was bemused to hear a lot of “I don’t see it!” These were likely from gazers viewing the sun through eclipse glasses and other zero-magnification filters. Plus I had the advantage of seeing the full disk of the Sun on a 17” laptop screen! |
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| I spent the next hour busily imaging the eclipse. I spaced my exposures three minutes apart and captured two sequences each time, varying exposure settings in order to capture surface features and solar prominences as the Moon transited the Sun. I had my head under a jacket most of that time; I was using the jacket as a glare shield to better help me see the laptop screen. I also shared views of the laptop screen to anyone who walked by. |
 Image by Tony Giancola. |
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As annularity approached, I made it a point to look around, checking out the crowd and looking for other tell-tale signs of the eclipse. Unfortunately there were few plants and shrubbery around (this is high desert, after all), so I did not see any pinhole projections of the eclipsed sun. The “eclipse dimming” phenomenon was not that pronounced to me either, as my mind was likely fooled by the visual cue of a setting sun telling me that “since it’s sunset, it must be getting dark”. |
| The crowd gave the event a round of applause as we reached annularity. To my surprise, the crowd also thinned rapidly afterwards. Not many stayed around to watch the Moon exit the disk of the sun. I persevered with my imaging, shooting the eclipsed Sun through an intervening cloud bank, all the way through sunset behind a foreground hill. |
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John and Graham helped me tear down and pack up my equipment, which took much longer that I had hoped for. It had gotten dark by then, and as we were all tired and a little chilly from the quickly-dropping temperatures, we excused ourselves from the Rancho Hidalgo/Granite Gap gang, who had set up and were stargazing through Gene’s 30" telescope. We missed that night of stargazing, but figured the eclipse was excitement enough. We got back to the motel in Magdalena close to midnight, tired but elated. |
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The following day, after one last meal at Magdalena, we headed off to the VLA where we were joined by most of the Granite Gap folk from the prior evening, along with Jeff and his family. We were treated to the tour given by the VLA personnel. Among the highlights of the tour:
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 The Control Room |
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 A View from the Control Room |
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 A single antenna |
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 A Transporter |
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 A Transporter with its payload |
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From the VLA, we took the four-hour-drive to Rancho Hidalgo, where we settled in for the rest of the week to do some dark-site stargazing. Weather conditions conspired against us unfortunately; that first night was clouded out (it did clear around 4 in the morning, but we were asleep at the time), and the rest of the week freak windy conditions minimized our ability to gaze beyond a few minutes. We counted our blessings, as the conditions for the eclipse were almost perfect. We made the best of the rest of our stay at Rancho Hidalgo by touring the surrounding area; one day was spent visiting Granite Gap, Arizona Sky Village and Cave Creek Canyon. I also made use of this visit to perform some maintenance on my remote observatory by swapping out the TOA-130 OTA with an FSQ-106 for widefield imaging. A quick test showed all systems were fully operational! |
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As with all visits to Rancho Hidalgo, this one ended all too quickly. We ended our visit with a barbecue for our hosts and other visitors in appreciation for everything they did for us. |
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John and Graham’s visit to Rancho Hidalgo ended the weekend of Memorial Day. While I flew back to Cincinnati that same weekend, that was just the end of Part 1 of my trips. The following week, I flew back to Phoenix, Arizona, this time with my wife Josephine, for the last Venus transit that we will see from Earth in 117 years. |
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| To the Venus Transit! | |