This year the Solar Wind Sherpas expedition to observe total solar eclipse in the USA and Mexico was special: never before had so many students set out on it. What is it like to join an international scientific team? How does it happen that your photo is sent to NASA right away? And what if, on the other hand, the observation doesn't work out at all? We interviewed FME students Pavel Mikuláček and Václav Široký who were among the five BUT students involved in the expedition.
Pavel Mikuláček, a doctoral student of Applied Mathematics, managed to practice his English truly well during the expedition in Kerrville, Texas. He was the only Czech to go to the observation site, the rest of the crew was formed by experts of the University of Hawaii. "On the other hand, it was an advantage. I was able to disconnect myself, stop perceiving the hustle around and concentrate on my work," says Mikuláček, recalling, in particular, the situations when curious American tourists were looking at him from behind the line – a bit like an exhibit.
The Kerrville observation site was part of the Kerrclips "eclipse festival." "About 10 minutes from the town of Kerrville, this little village grew up in the middle of nowhere. There were thousands of people at the festival, tents were set up everywhere, and people were transported around the vast area using golf carts. We had a designated area in the middle of the tent city, where we had both sleeping tents and tents with our observation equipment. The organizers even announced the presence of a scientific group in the festival program, because some of the American colleagues also gave a lecture on eclipses and the solar corona. Otherwise, the atmosphere was quite festival-like: ice and coke boxes everywhere with people having a barbecue, ...." Mikuláček recalls.
Although the first days in Texas looked promising, in the end, the Solar Wind Sherpas and all festival visitors had to swallow a bitter pill. On the day of the eclipse, it became cloudy and the sun was hidden by clouds. "We kept hoping that a miracle would happen, that the clouds would break up. We had the equipment ready and running, but unfortunately, we were not able to collect any data at all. We only saw the sun for a few seconds," says Mikuláček sadly.
Observation point at the "eclipse festival" of Kerrclips (photo: archive of P. Mikuláček)
Although their team did not succeed, the Solar Wind Sherpas expedition as a whole was a success. On the other hand, observations have been successful in several other places in the USA and Mexico. Due to the unpredictability of the weather, the team tries to divide each expedition into smaller units and observe the phenomenon from multiple locations. Thus, they increase the chances of succeeding as a whole. And in Kerrville, the group there just had bad luck.
Despite this, Pavel Mikuláček takes home a great experience. "Although it was cloudy, the phenomenon was somewhat visible through the clouds, so it was a strong impression: it gets completely dark from one minute to the next and you just get goosebumps...", he recalls, hoping to be able to join the group in two years, when a total solar eclipse will be visible in Spain.
Photographing the eclipse with a mobile phone
On the other hand, the conditions experienced by Mechatronics student Václav Široký could not have been more different: the peaceful environment of a lonely farm, blue skies and one hundred per cent success. He was also glad for the opportunity to join the expedition because he himself is a photographer and leads the Student Photo Club Technika Brno at the faculty. Thanks to contacts from the photo club, he was able to arrange the loan of modern equipment from Nikon for the expedition, which he supplemented with his own equipment and was then in charge of this set during the eclipse.
"I took all my equipment with me, so there was no usable camera left at home," says Václav Široký with a laugh. "From the beginning of the expedition, I tried to have a camera at hand and take backstage photos. However, two days before the eclipse, I had to definitively incorporate this last instrument into the observation setup, so then I only took pictures on my mobile phone," he adds.
He brought back about a thousand photos from the preparations and course of the expedition, out of which two hundred were left after sorting. "Most of these are the images of the eclipse and especially the calibration images that are necessary for further image processing," he explains.
Although Václav Široký is an enthusiastic photographer with a basic knowledge of astrophotography, many of the procedures were completely new to him. "The calibration images and the control of the technology were not a problem. But for the first time, I used an equatorial mount, which is a device that helps to trek the Sun across the sky during an eclipse so that it is always in the same position in the image. That is, as the Earth rotates around its axis, causing the Sun to seemingly move across the sky, it could happen that the Sun would "run away from the picture" during an eclipse. That is why equatorial mounts are used, which are set up so that the axis of the motor, which rotates the mount at a speed of 360 degrees per day, is parallel to the axis of rotation of the Earth," says Široký.
Preparation of equipment (photo: Václav Široký)
Even if we disregard the requirements of scientific use, solar eclipse photography has its own specifics. Especially since the difference between light and shadow, which the human eye can easily handle, is only handled by cameras to a limited extent. "The scene has an incredible dynamic range that can't really be captured in one shot. That's why you shoot on multiple cameras with different exposures and different focal lengths, and then you have to put it all together," explains Široký.
Paradoxically, the first seconds of the eclipse were not seen by Václav Široký at all. "At that moment, I was checking if my cameras were set up well and everything was working. Only then did I allow myself to look up and start enjoying it. I didn't see the moment that my colleagues then described: the instant when the eclipse entered the phase called C2, when the Moon completely covers the Sun. It was like when you flip a switch, the landscape just went dark. And everything went completely silent. We were in nature, during the day there were constantly birds singing and insects buzzing, and suddenly – complete silence. Only the cameras were clicking," he recalls.
Although he took away strong impressions from the eclipse, the most powerful moment was yet to come. "Shadia Haball from the University of Hawaii, the leader of the expedition, asked me to send her one photo right away, saying that she needed it for a presentation she was sending to NASA. She really used it and put our names underneath it. And I was like, Wow! When we visited the NASA Center in Houston before we left, I went there with the feeling that I had done at least a little thing for them," he concludes.