Preparations for this eclipse started already in 2019, when I first visited the villages of Cetina and Sisamon. The villages are just a few kilometers apart and are located between Madrid and Zaragoza. Especially the vicinity of Sisamon profed to have great spots for night time observations, as light pollution is pretty low. The same spot I observed in 2019 was also a perfect spot for the solar eclipse, as it lies approximately 1000m above sea level in a high plane. To the west, only some distant hills are seen, reaching 2 degrees above the horizon at maximum. This was crucial, as the totality would happen with the sun being only 7 degrees above the horizon.
Thanks to the mayor of Sisamon and my sister in law to communicate with him, I got the permission to setup my observation base at this very location. He also supported me in having my complete equipment without any obstacles and disturbances, despite a good 100 locals joining the event. They were all essential for the emotional experience, as many of them started cheering and shouting when totality arrived. A big THANK YOU to everyone involved to make this a perfect day!
According equipment, my primary goal was to get the shots for the Eclipse Mega Movie project (a Sonoma State / NASA project, I participated the third time). Then, some overview and especially landscape views of totality were on my plan, to also showcase the shadow of the moon.
In Spain at the eclipse site I got a couple of times the question, how the sun will look like visually and on their own camera. The majority was referring to their mobile phone when thinking about a camera. So in general, my reply was rather disappointig to them. You know why? It is easy to explain:
The size the sun as seen from earth, is half a degree in diameter. (Luckily, the moon is exactly the same size with minor variations, so we can witness solar eclipses 🙂 )
Mobile phone cameras have typical angles of view in the range of:
120 degrees in ultra wide angle camera (12 mm lens on full frame camera)
80 degrees on the main camera (wide angle) (24 mm lens on full frame camera)
10-20 degrees with tele camera (120-240 mm lens on full frame camera)
This means, that on the main sensor, the sun will only be a small circle with less than 1/100th of the image diagonal. If you are lucky and own a mobile phone with optical tele (zoom) with 10x or more and a 50 megapixel sensor, the sun will show up with some / reasonable size on your photo. Still, it will not compare to decent tele photo lenses or telescopes simply due to optical limits of the tiny lenses in the mobile phone cameras. The key reason is called diffraction (waves passing through an aperture will alter their direction by some extent), which limits optics from exceeding resolution depending on the aperture size of the lens. A large mobile phone camera lens with i.e. 10 mm diameter has a resolvin limit of approximately 12 arcseconds (1/300th degree). In comparison, a larger tele lens or smaller telescope with 72 mm lens diameter would be able to resolve 1.4 arcseconds.
To break it down, the following table has some technical information about the sizes of the sun on different cameras:
Mobile phone camera
36mm equiv. Focal Length
Diagonal FOV
Angular Resolution (50 MPx sensor)
Size of sun
0.5x ultra-wide
12 mm
120°
0.0118° / Px 42.33″ / Px
42 Px
1x main camera
24 mm
80°
0.0078° / Px 28.22″ / Px
64 Px
10x tele
240 mm
10°
0.0010° / Px 3.53″ / Px
510 Px
Size of the sun on mobile phone camera with 50 megapixel sensor
Probably easier to see are the real world examples… I took these images using the mandatory solar filters ahead of the 2024 eclipse. I wantet to see, how much of the corona would fit in and how precise the tracking has to be for the required shots.
This demonstrates, that on the mobile phone, the sun is only a tiny dot. Even the tele camera is not showing details due to the optical limits. To photograph the sun with some details of the surface, a larger optic is required. But what a telescope or a large tele lens is not capable of to record is the whole scenery and the emotional impact of a solar eclipse. This would be the perfect use of the mobile phone.
Final word: No matter what you want to capture during a total solar eclipse – prepare everything to run as independent as possible. The few minutes of totality are best recorded in your own memory. Do not let the technical gizmos distract you from this uniqe moment!
Hannes and Gerhard (two fellows from the astronomy club) invited me to join their endeavor to see the northern lights in Tromsø. It paid off to participate from the first moment on. Despite unpleasant weather forecasts, it was a great trip with beautiful sightseeing opportunities, good food, some drinks and relaxed time (waiting for the lights to come)
Only a few of the days in northern Norway were disturbed with unfavorable weather. We had like every type of possible weather conditions from strong wind, snowfall, icy roads to blue skies and temperatures above freezing. More off, from the 10 days we spent around Tromsø, we were fortunate to see the northern lights on 8 nights. Even more, on 3 of these nights, an auroral substorm provided beautiful and intense displays of colors (mostly green, but also red and violet), where sometimes all the surroundings were cast in green light.
With the sun in solar maximum 2024 had several fascinating aurora events even far from the aurora oval at around 66 degrees latitude. Therefore I planned for a trip to Iceland, to see aurora in its best. Who could expect the sun to take a pause, so no significant eruption takes place from the first days of 2025 on? Reencouraged with a note from space weather officials, that the setting of interplanetary magnetic field, earths magnetic field and the ring current was favorable to produce aurora at least close to the aurora oval, I travelled to Iceland. Arriving there in anticipation for a pristine northern winter experience had another surprise at hand: a large low pressure zone lured south of Iceland. This low pressure zone caused strong winds (reaching almost 30m/s), lots of rain and unusually high temperatures (up to 9°C) for February.
After four days of grey skies and rain, weather was improving a bit. Even a 3-4 hour window of cloudless skies was predicted for the late evening. As if planned, when the clouds subseeded, the aurora began its show. Most of the time, Aurora was like eery greyish cloud bands to the naked eye. But during phases of increased intensity, green and red tones were also clearly visible. On camera, especially the green aurora looks spectacular!
The following day was again quite wet. But at night, once again a few hours with little cloud cover provided another aurora show to be witnessed. To top off the Iceland experience, on the last day a few moments of sunlight during sunset let me part in joy to have seen aurora and the beauty of this island
Recently I visited Helsinki (Finland). Temperatures dropped down to -15°C, causing even the waters in Kruununvuorenselkä to freeze over. Further out, patches of ice foes were drifting. Along with a fresh blanket of snow, everything just looked amazing. Especially Nuuksio national park close to Helsinki provided a marvellous setting for a great time
The main reason to travel to the US and go on a road trip to follow almost the entire golf coast from east to west was to see and photograph the total solar eclipse on April, 8th. My plan was to image with a total of 9 cameras. Most of the cameras got a custom made (see my 3D design here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2431974) flip-away solar filter, to facilitate the on and off during totality. As I was up to share my photos with the scientific community through the Eclipse Mega Movie project, like in 2017 (https://eclipsemegamovie.org/), I had some constraints to follow for my setup.
Therefore, the complete setup, which should be mounted on 4 independent tracking mounts, was:
Sony A6000 full-specturm modified with 80/600mm APO
Sony A6400 with 72/435mm APO for longer exposure sequences
Sony A6400 with 72/435mm APO for shorter exposure sequences
Sony A99ii with 35mm lens to capture the eclipsed sun with planets and hopefully a comet
Sony A58 with 135mm lens
Sony ZV-E10 with 100/1000mm maksutov
QHY485C with 50/242mm APO for a totality video
2 GoPro cameras for scenery
Test setup with almost all cameras
With bad luck, the airline was incapable of delivering one piece of luggage with my primary tracking mount within almost 3 weeks. Therefore I had to reduce the actual setup for the eclipse day in parts. Furthermore, it was quite unsure, whether observing the eclipse was even possible. A wide stretched cloud system covered large protions of Texas. In the morning, there was not even a patch of blue sky visible. Luckily, the clouds got less and less and even the one cloud covering the sun a few minutes before totality moved away. So we finlly could observe the eclipsed sun with an almost perfect sky. In the end I was able to record the required images, totaling to more than 400 GB of data.
The April 2024 total solar eclipse was a must-see event for me. To add some adventure before the big event, we decided to start from Space Coast (Kennedy Space Center) in Florida and drive all the way to Boca Chica for a visit to SpaceX’s Star Base in Texas. Inbetween, lots of interresting places waited to be visited (theme parks in Orlando, New Orleans for Mardi Gras, Space Center Houston, …). Apart from an essential piece of luggage which did not arrive (and a horrible mosquito attack in the Louisiana swamps), the biggest disappointment was the scrubbed launch of the last Atlas IV rocket with no time to wait for the next time frame. After all, it was a incredible trip. On the one hand, there were rockets (including a Falcon 9 launch), satellites, rovers and many more space tech. On the other hand, there were fascinating animals, buzzing cities and great people.
During the last years I frequently ran into trouble with the stock Sony batteries. Neither of the camera – battery combinations I had, were capable of imaging more than approximately 4 to 5 hours (some cameras drained their batteries within less than 2 hours). So I tried to determine the optimum means of powering a Sony camera for several hours without the need to change batteries. Here is, what I came up with:
Option 1: Batteries with increased capacity Several after market companies offer compatible batteries with increased capacity. These batteries are also offered at more than competitive price tags. In my experience, most of these batteries do not provide the capacity as imprinted. There are units, which significantly exceed the stock batteries. But you may also get a battery, which is outperformed by the stock battery – even though it is offered at twice the capacity. If you are lucky and you have a well performing battery, you may extend the time in operation by 10%-50%.
Pro
Con
– economic price – up to 50% longer operation – no external units required
– does not last a whole night – capacity labelling may be misleading
Option 2: USB power supply Several – and at least the new models – have a USB port, which is capable of powering the camera during usage. This is a great way to have your camera last for hours. This is also a truly economic way, as you simply plug a USB power bank to the camera. Be aware, that you may need a special splitter cable, to simultaneously run a trigger and the USB power supply through the Multi-Port connector! See here, how such a cable may look like: Combined charger and trigger cable for Sony mirrorless cameras like A6400 But to my experience with a Sony A6400, the USB port is not capable of providing sufficient power in heavy use situations. When I had the camera shoot 3000-7000 images in 1 second intervals, I ended up with a (almost) drained battery. So the camera was constantly discharging and charging the battery. The discharge rate was higher than the charging rate. This caused the camera to significantly heat up – which is highly discouraged in astrophotography! Further more, at least the battery is set under unneccessary stress.
Pro
Con
– really cheap – may last the whole night – may be “hot plugged”
– camera may heat up – special cable may be required – battery stress
Option 3: Vertical Grip The majority of the higher end and high end cameras may be equipped with a vertical grip unit. The vertical grip units are typically fitted to the battery slot instead of the battery. To power the camera, the vertical grip incorporates a tray for 2 battereries. This doubles the capacity possible. But depending on the camera, if you keep the remote trigger port constantly in focus / pre-fire mode, the camera may not switch to the second battery. So you may end up with a camera in power-safe mode and an exhausted battery as well as a fully charged one… Further more, you have to keep in mind, that the vertical grip units are quite heavy (adding a couple 100g in weight). This may be an issue to your setup!
Pro
Con
– no external components – easy to handle
– vertical grips are not quite cheap – battery capacity only doubled – higher weight
Option 4: External power supply Some Sony cameras have a power in connector. This is a proprietary connector, which was already in use back in the Konica/Minolta aera. The connector is flat, with both poles on the opposite sides. On one side, there is a small bar, to prevent reverse plugging. So, technically, no big deal. Unfortunately the connectors are not available individually. But nowadays, you get really cheap power supplies with matching connectors online. If you are a DIY person: it is really easy to build or use such a connector; Simply provide 7.2V from a mains supply, step converter or lithium batteries ;-). To my experience, in-camera batteries are disconnected from the camera, when you plug in the external supply. So, if you plug or unplug the external supply, the camera restarts. If you leave the plug in the camera and cut the supply voltage, the camera is not operable (due to disconnected battery)
Pro
Con
– easy to handle – easy to build yourself – cheap – perfect for studio / fixed setup
– designed for mains connection – does not charge in-camera batteries – disconnects in-camera battery (no backup, if mains fails)
Option 5: Battery dummy Dummy batteries are a great sollution for long lasting scenarios. You replace the camera battery with a plastic dummy, which has a DC plug. You simply provide 7.2-8V from any means of power supply you have. This may be a mains adapter, USB power bank with step-up adapter, a 12V car socket with step-down adapter or a lithium battery pack with 2 batteries in series. There are even some dummy batteries with included USB to 7.2V converter. But they may lack the power neccessary to drive the camera (some cameras are specified with 7.2V 2A input, which is way above the typical extended USB power scheme of 5V 2.1A. As there are so many ways to provide the power needed, it is a very versatile option. But you have to be careful in selecting the right dummy. Some dummy units do not lock perfectly in the battery slot. So the dummy may fall out of the camera, or it disconnects. Some may have very stiff cables, which pose a lot of stress to the battery compartment lid (which is a true pain to replace!) Hints: – You may never want to charge the dummy battery! This may pose a high risk of damage! – provide a well stabilized, battery-like voltage for best performance – if the dummy disconnects or is not supplied, the camera is off immediately
Pro
Con
– versatile – quite cheap – may last several hours to days
– may disconnect – not every dummy is well made
Summary Depending on the situation, I choose any of these options – or even stick to replacing the batteries frequently. But my personal favorite for long lasting sessions is Option 5 in combination with a 2S 2P or 3P lithium pack (2 or 3 parallel, 2 in series). This power pack provides 7,4V straight off (no converter needed) with far more than 4 times the capacity of the stock battery. Up until now, I never ran into drained batteries, even under -10C conditions after 10 hours shooting.
Light painting is a fascinating way to communicate a message. If the background and light is right, it is only up to your imagination what you add to your photo…
Here is how to create a light painting (how I created this New Years greeting):
Find the right scene: you need sufficient space to move you need a sufficiently dark background to “write on”
Set up your camera on a tripod
use a wide-angle lens. With a tele lens you have to stand quite far away from the camera
use a timer remote or have a friend operate the camera. Otherwise you will have a workout running back and forth 😉
prepare a flashlight, which is not too strong. A red or otherwise colored flashlight creates beautiful effects! You may cover your white light with colored filter foil as well!
wear dark, non reflecting clothes! Or you will appear like a ghost beneath the text in the image
try to memorize, which message you want to write
find the right spot where you will write, so that the text is at the right location in your image (take test shots to verify!)
find the right size to write your letters. The text has to be readable and within the bounds of your scene or camera frame
determine, wheter you will write in single strokes, or multiple strokes. This depends on the intensity of your flashlight and the desired effect, how the letters should look like. Single strokes look quite clean, whereas multiple strokes create a bit fuzzy look, which is often more appealing. Though multiple strokes are more difficult to make, as you write in thin air and have no reference, where you put the previous line. Therefore keep in mind: you only move your hand when writing one letter. Move your body only when advancing to the next letter or word!
test, how long you need for the message to write. This defines the minimum exposure length!
Set the right ISO value and aperture for the desired exposure time. Test the exposure to not over-expose. If you choose a too low ISO / too high aperture, you dim the flashlight. This makes the text you write hard to read
Now for the tricky part: The text you will write has to be written mirrored! It is the camera who “wants to read” the message, not you! Memorize your message in mirrored letters, written from right to left. It helps to close your eyes and just move your hand writing the mirrored text a couple times. Don’t get too frustrated when you make errors! Depending on the letters, I need several attemts to have everything right as well 😉
Now you are all set. Get in position, switch on your flashlight. Trigger your camera and start writing!
Tips: – cover the flashlight with your hand when advancing to the next letter / word! – move brisk but fluently – direct the flashlight to the camera – make equally spaced steps between the letters or words
I love these autumn days with pristine weather. Temperatures are still pleasent. The many red, brown, yellow and some green leaves combined with blue skies create the perfect scenery for walks and hikes. This wonderful October day had just everything of the above, set in the mountain region in Salzkammergut in Austria! The following images were taken in Hallstatt as well as around Altausseersee…
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