by Akkana Peck
[The eclipse] just ended a little while ago here in southern CA. We had very warm, pleasant weather and clear skies (a nice surprise after last night's heavy fog), though the seeing was very unsteady with the moon that low in the sky ("Wow, the moon sure has a lot of mountains ... and they keep moving around!"). The chuck out of the solar disk was more obvious than we'd expected from the simulations in S&T. Lots of nice sunspot groups to look at, including one shaped like the Cartwheel galaxy -- a small central sunspot group with a faint ring all the way around it.
We used a homemade 85mm off-axis Baader filter on my 8" dob, and homemade binocular filters with Thousand Oaks material (not so good for seeing detail, but they worked great on binos). We compared estimates of last contact time in the binos and the scope, which agreed almost exactly.
Merry Christmas! Wishing all of you have clear, steady skies, good optics and good company throughout the holiday season, and beyond.