Astro Blog Delta « 2015 Solar Eclipse @ Heaton Park, Manchester «

Well, that’s it for Europe until 2026. We had a nice gathering with a lot of people of all ages at Heaton Park, Manchester today, however the weather was not favorable. We did lose the sun completely near the maximum (and I don’t mean the moon covered it – it was due to thick clouds) and people were trying to figure out why the solar shades were not working (the clouds were already filtering the sun, hence they were not needed), but otherwise it was good, everybody seemed to have a good time.

A few shots with the Canon 550D through the Skywatcher 80ED (Baader astrosolar ND 5.0), with the sun behind the clouds:

The setup for the day was supposed to be both my 80ED and 127 Mak on the ZEQ25 mount with their Baader astrosolar filters, the Mak for visual and the 80ED with the Canon 550D for photos. Also I had planned for my 450D FS mod to shoot every three minutes in infrared with the 18-55mm lens on a tripod hoping to combine the series of shots in one showing the full progress of the eclipse. These were the plans, but due to the extensive clouds the Mak was pretty useless, and there was no point in shooting every 3 minutes with the intervalometer, so in the end only the 80ED was used – half the eclipse taking photos, and half looking through it (mostly for the people around me).

Heaton Park. Waiting for the sun to come out again. Don't worry about the lack of solar shades, they were available - we were safe, just useless.

Heaton Park. Waiting for the sun to come out again. Don’t worry about the lack of solar shades, they were available and we were safe, they were just useless that day.