On Monday I will be at Molloy College on Long Island, East of NYC, along with the President of our astronomy club. The two of us will be setting up 4 telescopes. The College is having an event that day of which this is part. They are expecting 200 people at the event. We don't know how many will come to see the 72% eclipse through our telescopes. It should be interesting.

I will have my ETX 80 and ETX 125 scopes set up. Have done test set-ups for tracking where I can't see any alignment stars during the Goto set-up. Tracking works fine. And, of course I will have solar filters on both.

Testing with my ETX 80 showed me that around 20X to 35X is the best magnification to target for the Eclipse. I have an 18 mm eyepiece that gives me 22X in the ETX 80 so that is what I will use there.

For the ETX 125, this is an F15 1900 mm Mak. With a 32 mm Plossl I am at 60X. That is too high for the eclipse so I figured I could not use it. Then I recalled that I have a .5 focal reducer in my RI2 kit. So I should be able to use that with the ETX 125 to get that 60X down to 30X which would work well for the eclipse.

I plan to try the RI2 in the ETX 80 this weekend but since I have the focal reducer on the ETX 125 I am not sure how well this will work. Worth a try.

I was looking for some kind of group event for the Eclipse but so many people have traveled out of town to be in the total area that nothing was happening at my club or the other club in the area. So when I received the invite from the President to help at the College I was happy to accept.

Hope you all have some sort of special something for the Eclipse, whether you will be in the total zone or not.