Cedar Hills Vineyard, Ravenna, NE, August 18th, 2017

I hosted a star party for the guests at the Cedar Hills Vineyard & Gardens (http://www.cedarhillsvineyard.com/) on Friday night before the solar eclipse. The night started rather hazy, so viewing of Jupiter (near the horizon from that latitude) was poor and Saturn was marginal. However, once we hit full dark they had excellent dark skies with only a small light cone over Grand Island. Viewing for the rest of the evening was excellent.

I captured time lapse images throughout the evening with the camera set on auto exposure to take longer exposures as the night went on. Unfortunately the camera limited the exposure to 6 seconds at 1600 ISO, so I didn't get the long 30 second exposures I normally look for at full dark. I attempted to stretch the later images somewhat without getting too noisy, but ah well.

You'll also want to check out the eclipse photos and other information found here, as well as the solar eclipse party wide field time lapse and other images.