Me and my family drove to the Trinity Lake KOA campground on Saturday morning and reached there by 4 PM. I immediately went to the site suggested by the local staff at KOA. I wanted to make sure the mountains/trees do not obstruct the sun during the eclipse and decided upon the location I would chose the next day. I also wanted to do some night sky observing. However, the sky was already getting a bit cloudy and by the evening 7;30 PM it turned completely cloudy. My plans to do DSO observing and Imaging looked bleak. However as the sun set, the clouds slowly began to dissipate and by 10 PM the sky was completely clear. Along with my twin sons, I set up our 12″ Orion dobs for the visual observations and AT111 for imaging.

Even though the sky was clear, the seeing was not ideal. Also, observing near the lake was not a good idea either. The night turned out to be otherwise very satisfying as the three of us were able to observe multiple fuzzies. We started with a few eye candies, Saturn, Mars, M13, M57 and then moved to galaxies M81-82, M51 and Leo triplets. We then located both the arms of Veil NGC6992 and 6960. As Scorpio and Sagittarius started to rise, we watched M4, M6 and 7, M8 and M20. We also tried locating supernova in M95 and I think, we were able to locate that. I was simultaneously switching form observing to imaging Leo triplets on my Astrotech. At around 2 AM, we decided to wind up as it was getting too cold for my sons to handle.

The next morning on the day of the solar eclipse, the day looked beautiful. At 4 PM, we headed to the same spot. There were few scopes there already. Dave Majors from Central Coast astronomy had set up his new LX200. There was another group from San Francisco with their 8″ scope. I set up my AT111 with Astrozap white light filter and Coronado PST. KOA staff had also planned the event and they distributed solar viewing shades for people who had turned up (about 30+) They were people who were camping at KOA and the staff. Then there were 3 google engineers who flew their own Cessna from Palo Alto just to see the eclipse. There was another family who also flew in their small craft, landed on the lake to join the party.

With eclipse beginning at 17;10, there was excitement and ooh-aahs from the crowd. Since mine was the only h-alpha scope, people loved the view of few prominence especially 3 equally sized triplets ! Nearing the peak, around 18:22, a small bands of clouds started moving in. I was dreading that a dark patch might just move in during the annularity. And that is exactly what happened. At 18:26 the sun was completely behind the clouds. I was beginning to wonder about my choice of the place, while other TACos were leaning towards east and even Nevada. I might have regretted badly if I had missed the next two minutes. But fortunately, the sun was hidden only for 30 seconds. The full ring of fire was visible without obstruction for the rest of the annularity.

Finally the crowd began to thin out. KOA staff and most of us remained till the end of the eclipse. But for the 30 seconds of clouds and a blown out tire on the way, it was on the whole a very satisfying trip, with great eclipse observing and pretty good night observation.
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Time Lapse of eclipse: https://www.brahmand.me/annular-solar-eclipse-2012/

Eclipse Photographs: https://www.brahmand.me/2012/05/23/annular-solar-eclipse-of-2012/