Much of the US as well as portions of Mexico and Canada were blessed with a solar eclipse on April 8th, 2024. The line of totality stretched from Mazatlan, Mexico, through Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and parts of the NE US, New Brunswick and Newfoundland. I'd originally planned to be in Tow, Texas (red dot on weather map) with some inlaws, but the weather forecast looked so lousy (again, see weather map) that I decided to forego the long drive, stay in Las Cruces and participate in the local eclipse event instead.

Las Cruces was predicted to receive 79% coverage of the sun at maximum, and an viewing was planned at the small park adjacent to the Thomas Branigan Library. So I took a couple of solar scopes out and shared views with the public along with a couple of other ASLC volunteers. We literally shared hundreds of views - it was a fun and worthwhile (and busy) event.

I took only a few images; most of my time was spent sharing views. I shooed the public away from my ED80 long enough to take a couple prime focus images with my T2i. I also drug out my old 300D and took a few photos with a 200mm f/2.8 lens near eclipse maximum. The old camera still works like a charm.

The field of view used to acquire the image containing the prominent sunspot is shown in the Imaging Details box. The images at top are cropped and reduced in size. Clicking the image with the prominent sunspot above will open up an uncropped version.

Imaging Details
Imaging Date	08April 2024 ~18:00 UT
Imaging Location	Albert Johnson Park, Las Cruces, NM (32.32, -106.78, 1190m)
Constellation	Pisces
Imaging Optics	Orion ED80 & Canon 200mm f/2.8 lens
Imaging Cameras	Canon T2i DSLR (prominent sunspot), Canon 300D DSLR (max eclipse), iPhone 12 (crowd shot)
Imaging Filter(s)	Thousand Oaks Solar Filter (200mm),
Exposures	various
Guiding	n/a
Image Processing	Photoshop CS5 was used to tweak the color and contrast of the images. Topaz DeNoise AI was used to reduce noise and sharpen the images.