Every so often you get lucky and an eclipse of the sun takes place near your home. The solar eclipse of May 1994 had a maximum near Toledo Ohio, just a bit over an hour drive from our home so we packed up some gear and headed to a Holiday Inn with an indoor swim pool (for the kiddies) and an open patio to set up. Although long distance travel was not involved I am sorry to report that we had a problem. Bob's car was robbed of a radar sensing device during the eclipse. The window on the side of the car was broken and the thief absconded with a dash board radar detector. The car was just out of sight from our set up location, lesson learned!

Annular eclipse as photographed through the Questar 3.5" telescope at prime focus. The Questar solar filter was used the entire time.

During an annular eclipse the moon fits inside the solar photosphere. The brightness of the photosphere is so great that solar filters must be used during the entire annular eclipse of the sun. The relative size of the moon to the sun made visual observing with out filters out of the question. When not looking through the telescope, shadow projections and solar viewing glasses were used.