Partial solar eclipse, 5/12

Well I woke up this morning and took a look at the oklahoma meso-net satellite image wondering if I would be able to see the partial solar eclipse today. I was hopeful because despite a bad forecast, some folks were predicting a clearing of central oklahoma by the time of first contact. I sat on the edge of my seat all day, and around 1805 local, I saw the first blue sky patches. My original intent was to join the fine folks at the OKCAC for their viewing at windsurfer point on lake Hefner. Due to low gas in the tank, I opted for a more local viewing area. I drove out to my local lake and parked near the water treatment plant. This location had the best view of the western horizon.

I fired up the laptop and the inverter and the inverter bit the dust. I was able to get the scope aligned and tracking thanks to a gracious 4 minute long sucker hole. With the scope tracking well off the power tank, I tried to tackle the problem of the power inverter. I plugged it in straight to my car and started it, but the inverter was toast. This was unfortunate, I was not able to do any imaging and there was not a power plug in 300 yards of me. Literally burning daylight, I opted to stay at that location and try to image afocally with the iphone camera. Not the best, but it did not let me walk away empty handed. As it turned out, the pics that I got were all I was going to get this evening. A cloud bank rolled in and blocked my solar view all the way through sunset. I was bummed, but even the crappy afocal pics were pretty surreal. Worth it? You bet!