Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2017/08/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Nice to see the eclipse images from people. To be honest, I wouldn't have even tried to take any images as the spectacle of totality would probably have blown my mind. We had a very minor (4%) eclipse over here in Ireland at 8.00pm, and beforehand I started to make a pinhole projector out of a couple of pieces of stiff paper. This was a bit hit and miss. Then I remembered something, and went hunting for it. Having successfully located the solution, I watched the paltry eclipse through my Dad's 130 year old sextant which has pretty powerful colour filters. 23 years after my Dad died, it was nice to resurrect his sextant to see the moon bite. Instead of eclipse images, here's a couple of his sextant and his 2nd Mate's ticket taken with my iPhone. His 1st Mate's ticket is missing, and I understand from my mother that he either had got a his Master's ticket or else was studying for it.. Apparently, his insistence to me, when I had issues with my teachers, that he had been an exemplary school pupil turned out to be bigly fake news. My uncle said he had been a difficult rebellious individual, and that he had been expelled from two schools. In desperation, his father had sent him away to sea as a merchant ship's cadet with the Reardon Smith line based out of Cardiff. After circling the world a number of times over seven years, sanity prevailed, and he returned home to Cork, studied for his matriculation, and having got that, went to University College Cork on a scholarship where he got his degree. The only sailing he did later was with me and my brothers. Sextant by T.L. Ainsley of South Shields, England from the 1880s. iPhone 5S. http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/DouglasBray/Sextant.jpg.html Certificate of Competency for Second Mate from 1930. iPhone 5S. http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/DouglasBray/Second+Mate+Cert.jpg.html Douglas