I met up with some friends in Lake Tahoe to observe the solar eclipse on May 20th, 2012. Here’s a panoramic picture from our spot at the Sand Harbor beach near Incline Village.

I traveled with two huge checked bags stuffed with astronomy and meteorite hunting gear, a pelican camera case and a full back pack. It was worth the hassle and we had great equipment to observe and photograph the eclipse. Here’s a picture of me setting up the astrotrac travel mount and the Cornado Personal Solar Telescope.

Everybody loved the solar telescope and you could see flames shooting off the side of the sun. People were taking photos of the eye piece with iphones and quick shot cameras. This actually worked pretty well. Here’s a picture of totality taken with a canon power shot pointed at the eye-piece of the telescope.

Here’s a photo of the eclipse projected on a piece of paper using binoculars. This method actually works amazingly well, but you have to be careful people don’t actually look at the sun through the binoculars. Some folks just don’t know any better.

I setup my DSLR camera with a 400mm telephoto lens and some solar paper. This is effectively a telescope and the combo allowed for good viewing as well as photos.

I programmed the camera to shoot a picture every few seconds throughout the eclipse. Here’s a photo of the peak taken with the DSLR and solar paper.

And here’s a composite photo of the various phases.

We tore down the gear and then all headed out for a great dinner.

I highly recommend planning an eclipse trip or an eclipse observing session the next time one comes around. It’s enlightening and lots of fun!