[Leica] Re.: Eclipse from Sumper, OR

[Peter Klein]

Aram, well done on the eclipse pictures!

I too was disappointed with Halley's Comet.  It did not pass as close to 
Earth as in 1910.  I think you had to be in the Southern Hemisphere to 
see it decently.  However, a decade later, I saw both Comet Hyakutake 
and Comet Hale-Bopp from the mountain pass 50 miles east of Seattle.  
They were both quite beautiful, each in a different way. Hyakutake was 
like a big oblong greenish blob. Hale-Bopp was more of the classic 
comet, with both a white tail and a faint bluish ion tail. I didn't 
photograph them. I just observed.

A week or so after I watched Hyakutake, I got to compare notes on how it 
looked with astronaut Shannon Lucid on the Mir space station.  I talked 
to her on my ham radio.  *That* was quite a thrill.  Evidently the tail 
seems much longer from space, with no atmosphere and ambient light to 
obscure the darker features.

--Peter


 > Maybe the destroyed the picture when you flashed them.  Ha.
 >
 > That is a better shot of the comet than I ever got.  I had been looking
 > forward to that event ever since my grade school days.  I was of 
course the
 > science geek.  It was disapointing especially when compared to the 1910
 > photos I had been seeing all my life.  I would love to see a great comet
 > before I go of the the skies.
 >
 > Aram
 >
 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: Nathan Wajsman
 > Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2017 10:24 PM
 > To: Leica Users Group
 > Subject: Re: [Leica] Eclipse from Sumper, OR
 >
 > They certainly are excellent! I look forward to images of your fellow
 > watchers.
 >
 > When Halleys comet passed in 1986, I spent a couple of nights trying 
to get
 > usable images without much luck. We lived in north central Florida at 
the
 > time, and one popular place to go was Paynes Prairie, a nature reserve
 > (swamp) about 20 miles south of Gainesville, where there is an elevated
 > wooden walkway and a platform, normally used during the day to look 
down on
 > the alligators in the swamp, but on this occasion useful for setting up
 > cameras on tripod. There were perhaps 10-12 other photographers 
there. The
 > whole thing was somewhat disappointing; the best image I could get 
was this:
 >
 > http://www.greatpix.eu/Other/Stuff-from-the-20th-century/i-Fm3jcp3/A
 >
 > But by far the most fun image was when I put a flash on the camera, 
turned
 > around and snapped a shot of the other people. It was pitch dark, so 
they
 > got momentarily blinded by my flash and started yelling at me. Sadly, I
 > cannot find this image now.
 >
 > Cheers,
 > Nathan