How to shoot the August 21st solar eclipse on your iPhone

“On August 21, for the first time since 1918, a total solar eclipse will trace a coast-to-coast path across the U.S. Here’s some tips on how to capture it with your iPhone,” Roger Fingas reports for AppleInsider.

“First, some absolute basics. Though lot of states will see a partial eclipse, only parts of 14 will see it in totality — Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina,” Fingas reports. “NASA’s 2017 eclipse website is one good way of figuring out where you need to be and when, weather and budget permitting.”

“Regardless of where you are, be sure to wear ISO-certified eclipse glasses at all times during the event, except perhaps for the 2 minutes or so the sun is completely covered and only its corona is visible — even then, glasses must go back on before the sun re-emerges. Staring at the uncovered sun, even in a partial eclipse, can result in permanent eye damage,” Fingas reports. “Note that it’s also unsafe to look through any optics pointed at the sun unless they have their own solar filters. It’s alright to look at an iPhone screen, of course, so long as the sun isn’t directly behind it.”

Much more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Good luck, eclipse watchers and photographers!

11 Comments

  1. Ap[art from all the technical advice, there is also some logistic advice that you might like to bear in mind. If you’re travelling any distance to get to the path of the clips, there will be a hell of a lot of others doing it too and there may be a lot of congestion along roads, while parking places at good viewing spots may be already full.

    When we had a total eclipse in England in ’99, the best viewing spot was the county of Cornwall. It’s the bottom left hand part on the map of England and is a finger shape, bounded by sea on three sides. Effectively there were only a few roads in or out and the traffic jams were incredible. Some places were gridlocked for several hours before totality and six hours afterwards when people went home.

    Obviously things will be much easier with the eclipse happing across the centre of a large country as there isn’t a similar bottleneck, but you should still expect traffic delays and arrive early. It would be a huge shame to make a long journey and be stuck in your car just short of the place where you hoped to experience totality. Theres a massive difference between a partial eclipse and a total eclipse.

    1. One tip that I was told by an eclipse enthusiast is to try and find a location where you’re on high ground with either fairly flat landscape or water to the west of you. As the eclipse approaches, you can watch the shadow of the moon crossing the landscape on it’s way towards you.

    1. NASA could advise the U.S. military on the requisite logistics, particularly the optimal launch angle. Missile guidance is tricky outside the caressing envelope of Earth’s atmosphere, and even with a diminished solar flux within the eclipse’s penumbra, cosmic rays can fry your telemetry. Tomahawks don’t have the shielding to protect against such penetrating radiation. They could be quickly retrofitted, even in two days, but I wouldn’t count on the reprogramming to be accurate without enough time to run exhaustive tests. Programmers don’t work well under stress. There is also the slight problem of identifying an actual target since the eclipse is a natural positioning of two celestial bodies. Going against nature has never been a problem for U.S. leadership, but deciding which body to attack is. The president could command an attack on either the sun or the moon, but attacking the sun is silly and attacking the moon would enrage China, who reportedly established bases there, as well as ruin the economies of coastal economies that depend on moon-induced tidal effects. Then there are all the future generations of sweethearts who fell in love under a full moon. I’d say Trump has his hands full with this decision.

  2. Tough to get my post up. I have to stop making up new words maybe.

    How lovely to see someone with a sense of humor reply.

    You make an excellent point about the guidance system but the current “aim for Bin hit Saddam” guidance system you currently use seems to work great, I mean at least you hit a target close the same time zone and the most important part is that it makes a big BOOM, that’s what important to Apple’s home nation, style over substance. The shielding on the other hand but with the new chumpoego I’m sure nothing will penetrate it, It’s probably why it’s part of that special sauce for the nothing burgers.

    The chump sure has his hands full but that’s because his hands are so small and you know what they say, small hands, bird brain. Still he’s making great strides at draining the country of all the agalmatophilia freaks that are there. It helps explains the mass exodus of refugees from your country. It’s too bad that no one wants to take refugees from your nation except of course your neighbor and that’s only cause they need extra laborers to help them complete the trench that you already paid for.

    Mind you I have heard a rumor that they are planning a forced breeding program between repubikkkhans and demoncrats. Rumor has it that the offspring will be known as reptards. We should know more about the results when the eggs hatch.

    Thanks for the smile.

Reader Feedback

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.