After some teething troubles on the morning of the eclipse, I praise the Seestar which gave me better than I could have hoped for.
The worry - and vindicated - was a firmware update that could not be sidestepped. Just three days before hand I had checked for finding the sun from first principles after levelling, and noting concerns after an update earlier I was worried that the firmware updater might impede this - and it did, probably not helped by intermittent cloud during the hour running up to C1.
However, a few power cycles of both the phone and scope, including figure-of-eight waving the instrument to calibrate the compass and meticulously careful levelling of the tripod saw the scope find the sun and track it perfectly throughout the eclipse.
I manually exposed throughout, refocussed (by necessity) a few times as the instrument temperature changed - grateful for the sun spot to permit this.
At totality I changed exposure to as fast as possible with as low system gain as possible as the filter was removed. I was time-lapse recording throughout.
Just a single still here from totality
. I didn't expect much from totality as the field of view would not permit too much corona. However, I was extremely pleased.
Thank you, Seestar, for listening to us and getting us the manual control in time for the eclipse. Just wish we could defer firmware updates that come along at such critical times!
