1/250 second exposure, 3M 1000 slide film.
3" f/10 schmidt-newtonian telescope at prime focus.
Meeline station, April 9, 1986.
Rather than focus on one particular eclipse, this section contains photographs from a variety of eclipses, where I only managed to obtain one or two photographs for whatever reason.
The first eclipse of the sun that I can remember watching was in June 1964 . This was a partial eclipse from Perth and I was able to watch some of it during school breaks. I was also able to view partial ecplises on March 18, 1969 and on June 16, 1972. The 1969 annular eclipse was a deep partial from Perth, with the track of annularity passing only a couple of hundred kilometres off the Western Australia west coast.
I observed another partial eclipse in 1983, however it was not until 1986 that I was able to gain access to a good solar filter which enabled me to photograph these eclipses. On April 9, 1986, while I was on a comet Halley lecture tour of rural Western Australia, I was able to observe and photograph a small partial eclipse.
In 1988, I started university studies. Only 3 weeks after I started, there was another small partial eclipse. The university had an 8" celestron with a full aperture solar filter, so I made arrangements to use this to observe and photograph the eclipse. Unfortunately I had to share the telescope with others so I was only able to obtain one photograph.
Another partial eclipse visible from Perth occured on August 22, 1998. Again I made arrangements to use the University's 8" Celestron telescope and sun filter to observe it. After arriving at the university I set up the telescope on the roof and waited from the eclipse to start. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas and it began to sprinkle with rain! :-( It was extremely annoying to find that I was in one of the few places around the city where the clouds were covering the Sun!!! From where I was standing, I could see sunshine in various parts of the suburbs, but I saw nothing of the eclipse because of the cloud and rain!
