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Comment by dmarcos | Hacker News Reader

I have a Dwarflab DWARF 3 (also mentioned in the post) that I highly recommend. It’s one of those gadgets that ended up using more than expected when I bought it. I toss it in my luggage and I got to capture really nice sky pictures with little effort (Marfa TX, Patagonia, latest total solar eclipse in Spain)

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I'm interested in your eclipse experience. I tried capturing totality with a seestar S50 back in the 2024 eclipse. What I found is that at the very moment of totality, I had not removed the solar filter fast enough, and the bloody thing lost lock on tracking the Sun. Rather than fiddling with the equipment, I immediately started to ignore the 'scope and just experienced the eclipse.

That was the right thing to do!

But removing the solar filter right at the moment of totality is such an edge case (both for the software and my wetware which was kind of overwhelmed) that I wonder how others dealt with it?

I was capturing video and removed the magnetic solar filter as quick and carefully as I could. It worked but didn’t love the results. Hard to not move the telescope a bit that causes realignment and then obviously it has to readjust exposure that takes a moment. Same when putting it back after totality. I’m also looking for advice. We have another chance next year in Spain!

Yes indeed! Spain, next year! (And Australia, the year after that! ;-) )

I'm also wondering about the feasibility of taking these gizmos on airplanes, what with the Lithium battery packs, etc.

What we really need (for some definition of need) is a robot-filter-remover, timed to deal with the two critical times (first and last instant of totality; 2nd and 3rd contacts from memory). Anybody out there interested in building something like that? It would be purely a passion project, because it could only be used a few times a decade...

I’ve flown with it a handful of times without issue. Both in cabin luggage and checked in but I guess I’m risking it in the latter.

Not sure how a robot filter remover would work on the DWARF 3 that is reliable and works around loss of alignment and the exposure adjustment. I would love to find a solution for next year. Also wonder how can one test it out beforehand. I don’t want to burn the sensor ha ha

Agreed!

Also, I just found this (total hack, but cool)! [1]

[1] https://github.com/nsuan/TelescopeFilter

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