Eclipse Photography From a Ship

And you thought photographing from land was hard...

In April 2023 I assumed observers that were viewing from a ship would do so closer to the point of maximum eclipse. To support them I added a great deal of functionality to support photographing from a moving platform. Unfortunately in 2023 that effort was wasted. The ships travelled to Exmouth bay and set their anchors. Oh well.

In 2026 the track begins over Greenland and ends at sunset in Spain. While I find the latter a good choice another plausible way to see the eclipse is to take a short boat ride out of Reykjavik, Iceland to the track.

Photography from a ship forces you to surrender your fate to forces beyond your control.

  • You are on a moving (the only guarantee) platform that is rolling and pitching in three dimensions
  • You are at the mercy of the Captain. Sometimes this is good (see 2005). Sometimes not.
  • For all of the supposed benefits of being able to move to clear weather, the cloudy weather may find you (see 2005)
  • This is the most challenging situation to get time sync {unless you are using a GPS}

I have {tried to} image from a ship 6 different times. To give you a better idea of what to expect let me relate my own experience

  • 1999, 2002  Lost imaging on both due to an incompetent{or poorly motivated} Captain. In the latter I also took too much equipment. Did get to see both though.
  • 2005  A 30 second eclipse. Great Captain including dress rehearsals. Started clear, but the weather gods changed their minds. Lost Photography due to a camera problem. This is the origin of the one try rule. Did enjoy the last 20 seconds of the 30 second eclipse.
  • 2012  FINALLY. A clear day on calm waters off Darwin Australia. No rehearsal, but it was not possible in this case. Learned to not use a Zoom lens for eclipse photography
  • 2013 Already had a long run from Senegal to a site west of Liberia. Our meteorologist said we had to go even further. Got good pictures using a monopod. Don't watch the video if you get sea sick.
  • 2016  The best case scenario. Excellent Captain. Dress Rehearsal. But the meteorologist again said move. We did so and the location was as calm as glass. Even tracking mounts worked. Don't expect this again!
This program can help make this process a little easier by automatically recalculating when the eclipse is going to occur and triggering the camera when it does. I still favor a monopod, but might carry a fixed tripod in case we get lucky. You will be watching the eclipse through your optics while you point it (and will have to rehearse what you do at C2). So re-read all of the warnings about looking through your optics during totality. Especially note that when you see Chromosphere near C3 it is time to look away. I have a voice warning, but a red band on the edge of the sun is your ultimate clue.

GPS for Location

On a ship you can count on that you are moving. I was told that ships have to move at 7 knots for the stabilizers to be effective. I can confirm that we did that in 2005, 2012, and 2016. The ship simulation that I present below runs the test at 15 knots. I believe even at that higher speed you should be OK. To be clear though, "Welcome to the Beta Test".

Before I introduce the Ship Simulation Demo let me first show how a real GPS interacts with the program. In the section on Time I introduced using a GPS as a time reference. In this case we will be relying on the GPS for location {and probably also time}

I plugged the GPS in and opened the laptop moments before recording began

And yes it really came up that fast.

Ship Simulation

I built into the app a Simulation of the best case (from this program's view) scenario for how your ship might react on Eclipse Day. In version 1.5 I updated the scenario to the 2026 trip from Reykjavik.

In this scenario the ship starts on the centerline off the coast of Iceland and travels north along the path of the eclipse at 15 knots. Any faster and you will be bouncing around as we did in 2002 or 2013. This simulation not only models the movement of the ship (as shown by the GPS) but also models time. So you can place the program in the operational "GPS Time" mode and let it run. C1 will occur shortly after the program begins (so don't linger). As seen in the map on your right (below) the "ship" travels along the path of totality. This demonstrates how the GPS updates interact with the running scenario

There is one huge BUT with this scenario. In 2023 the simulation was not plausible. No ship would ever do behave as the simulation suggested. For 2026 the simulation is entirely plausible. The sun will be to the west. The shadow approaches from the north.

I calculated at 15 knots the last sample will be close enough to give a good enough location.

The movie below is based on the original 1.1 simulation, but it will convey the process.

What Your Ship Might Do Instead

A plausible alternative to the previous scenario would be the course on the right (below). In this case the ship travels at a right angle to totality. If the ship is traveling closer to 7 knots then relax everything will be normal and you can stop reading.

If it is moving at 15 knots then C1 will occur before entering the band of totality. The ship will enter the band about 50 minutes before C2 and will intercept the centerline at C2. The ship will still see C1 since it is many thousands of miles from the edge of the partial eclipse. No one else on board might even know the difference.

This presents a problem for this program that you might need to work around. By starting outside of totality the program will not accept the initial coordinates. It will continue to refuse to start automatic operation until you enter the band where totality will occur. The good news is there is a workaround.

You can skip the site definition for now. Start the camera. That will give you the ability to focus and take pictures. You will have to manually take your first partial pictures. You can determine the correct C1 time by using an app such as EclipseTimes which will compute the events for partial eclipses and has built in GPS capability. When the program indicates you are within totality (which according to these assumptions will be at least 50 minutes from C2) then you can fully start this program.

Again if you are moving at greater than 15 knots then you have bigger problems. If it is moving more slowly then this is just a worst case that you might be able to ignore. It will all depend on the sea and the captain.

Another problem you might have to face is that the automated script generator bases its decision on the location at the time it is run. If your ship is racing to the centerline from the side it may create less corona images than you can actually take. Similarly if start close to the centerline and then move away for totality you may not be able to take as many corona images as generated script specifies.

Thus this is the one legitimate case where using a pre-generated script might be required. Edit the generated to reduce the number of corona images captured. Since the script is relative to the event times it will self correct for your actual location. This may mean you camera will be idle for a part of the time you are in totality, but it will reduce the chance of missing the C3 events.

Again it is important to understand the plan for the day so you can act appropriately.