Cool videos! My wife and I traveled to Smith Rock State Park in Oregon and camped with some friends. It was without a doubt the most amazing natural phenomenon I have ever seen. April 2024 is the next one!
Thanks, a neat effect the eclipse videos don't show was a noticeable drop in temperature during the eclipse, after seeing a total solar eclipse first hand you wish it would happen more often
Also Gary, that little Astroscan is a gem of a telescope. Great for camping trips.
My 60mm refractor is better for higher magnification like looking at some planets, but the wide field of view Astroscan is great for good views of things like the Pleiades star cluster. I also have Mylar film solar filters for safely looking at the sun for sunspot activity.
The Pleiades star cluster can look like a handful of diamonds with a wide field telescope or binoculars.
I think the Andromeda galaxy is the only galaxy you can actually see with the naked eye without any binoculars or telescope, of course with the naked eye it looks like a smudge of light and the sky needs to be very clear and dark.
We live in a semi-rural area on the edge of a small town so the light pollution is not as bad as near big cities and the sky gets reasonably dark.
I remember a long time ago we had to drive thru the West Virginia mountains at night and made a stop and was amazed at how dark the sky was where you could see our Milky Way galaxy, it almost felt like you were in outer space
(For those without a telescope even binoculars can be good for looking at wide field views of the night sky)
Here's pics I found of the original Astroscan telescope, the Pleiades star cluster, the Andromeda galaxy, and our own Milky Way galaxy -