solar

The path of totality for the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse ran right through my backyard, and it was my first experience photographing totality. Total solar eclipses, when the moon completely covers the sun, are rare. After this year's eclipse, the lower 48 United States will see a brief bit of totality up around Montana in 2044, and a major event across the US in 2045—and I'll be near retirement!

See the full-size image of the eclipse composite on Flickr.

The above photograph is a composite image of all the stages of the 2024 eclipse. I took the pictures in the midst of a few thousand people scattered Fruitland, Missouri, during the April 8, 2024 Total Solar Eclipse.

On April 8, there will be a Total Solar Eclipse covering an large swath of the US, offering hundreds of millions of people the opportunity to witness one of the most spectacular displays of our sun.

I wrote two blog posts about the recent 2017 eclipse, as well—check those out:

• Photographing the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse
• DIY threaded solar filter

For this year, I was considering going all-in on a custom Raspberry-Pi-based solar tracking system, recording video and images... but Will Whang already built a custom solar imaging setup that would put anything I build to shame.

tl;dr: This website is currently being hosted off-grid, on a cluster of Raspberry Pis, via 4G LTE—or at some points through the same tunnel via WiFi if signal strength gets too low. Here's the GitHub repo for the project.

Note: The website was down for a few hours this morning, as shortly after this post I started getting a 40-50 Mbps flood of POST requests (over 6 million in a 30 minute time frame)... and yeah, no way the little Pi cluster could handle that. Thanks, Internet. It's back up through Cloudflare now, and I'll post more on this 'fun' experience later.

A couple weeks ago, after months of preparation, I took my 4-node Turing Pi 2 cluster (see my earlier review) to my cousin's farm, and ran this website (JeffGeerling.com) on it, live on the Internet—completely disconnected from grid power or hard-wired Internet.

Last year, when I first learned that my house was in the path of totality for this year's eclipse, I immediately logged into BorrowLenses and rented a Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 VR lens (for photography—it's now on my wishlist) and then purchased a set of eclipse glasses for my family, and materials to build a solar filter for the lens.

I've learned from Reddit's DIY community that people like the end result first... then an explanation, so:

See the full-size image of the Eclipse composite on Flickr.

tl;dr: Buy a step-up ring of appropriate size for your lens, buy a solar filter sheet, paste the sheet into the ring, screw the ring on your lens. And practice before the solar eclipse on August 21!

See my full post with the final result here: Photographing the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse.