Our family flew to Germany in August 1999 to visit relatives, travel
around in Germany, make a special trip to Guernsey in the Channel Islands, and to
see the total eclipse. The entire trip was a success except for the eclipse
part LOL. We left Stuttgart on the morning of the eclipse and planned to see
it from Pforzheim, which is half way between Stuttgart and Karlsruhe. Clouds
unfortunately blocked out most of the eclipse, including totality. The only
views we had were of some of the partial phases between first and second contact.
My intention was to get photos of the eclipse with a Nikon FE2 mounted
to my Meade 2045 Schmidt-Cassegrain, a great travel scope. Those were 4" SCT's
with a focal length of 1,000 mm, therefore f/10, which yields a pleasing image scale
on a full frame camera. I shot print film, and the pictures are not very good,
but this is what I have LOL. The finish is glossy so I could not get snapshots
with my iPhone without having bad glare reflections in the pictures. The second
shot shows that there were so many clouds I took the filter off the telescope and got
a view of the partially eclipsed disk of the Sun.
The animation at left shows the eclipse more or less
as it appeared near Pforzheim during the moment when
totality occurred (which of course we did not see).
The earlier phases, since they occurred in the later
morning hours, would have presented the Moon seeming
to enter from the upper right edge of the Sun, while
the partial phases after totality should be oriented
to show the Moon exiting the upper left of the Sun.
To avoid these complications related to the position
of the Sun with respect to the horizon, we just show
the Moon crossing the Sun in a straight line. I got
the relative sizes of Sun and Moon are as correct as
I could make them based on the eclipse circumstances
at Pforzheim.
