The 2017 Eclipse was my first Total Solar Eclipse (ignoring my overcast 1999 experience that took me years to recover from) and a long-term personal project. I worked for several hundreds of hours on it, defining my setups, optimizing my scope for contrast, designing 3D printed parts for automation, making rehearsals, and developing the algorithm to make high quality HDR composites.
From left to right: large FOV setup, fisheye for timelapse, high resolution setup, 4K video setup, myself enjoying a hot Corona 😉 after a successful eclipse, and 65mm spotting scope for visual observation (image from Diane Lefaudeux and Benjamin Girault).
The chosen observation spot was the quiet ancient cemetery of Unity, Oregon.
The whole eclipse trip was 3000km, with a landing at San Francisco International Airport in order to pickup the rental cameras and lenses for the high resolution and large FOV setups.
In order to enjoy the eclipse visually, I automated as much as possible the different setups. Here the automated eclipse filters.
Smoke from the summer wildfires in Oregon.Â
During the scouting, I spent a wonderful night in the small plain East of Unity. Very dark sky, but loads of mosquitoes. For the eclipse, I chose the old cementary of Unity that was on the hills just at the western edge of the plain and provided better seeing.
HDR astrophotography by Nicolas Lefaudeux 