We have been planning on live-streaming the eclipse from Illinois back to our observatory for two years. We sent a crew and some nice telescopes to the site. The Hamilton County State Fish and Wildlife area offered us a group campsite on 2 acres for our exclusive use. They generously mowed the area, provided tables, fire pits, water, two porta potties, and a dumpster. With that much space we made the decision to invite geocachers to the event. And they came, from a variety of states across the country. Many of them camped with us the night before and after the eclipse. We had lively campfires both nights. The The highlight, of course, was the eclipse itself. If you have never seen a total solar eclipse, it is hard to describe. It affects you on a visceral level. Everyone whooped and hollered and many tears were shed. As it finished, the universal exclamation was “When is the next one?”
    I had been using a 10" F4 refractor on my equatorial mount for deep sky astrophotography. I loved the images but I needed a wider field for some of the targets I wanted to image. I bought the SV550 Triplet Refractor with the Focal Reducer and was very pleased to be able to include the whole Pleiades Star Cluster or Rosette Nebula in a single field. I added the SVBONY Power Box later which greatly improved my cable management.
     We were live streaming the 2025 Total Solar Eclipse via Zoom and we had two Seestar S50s and a SVBONY SV550 80mm triplet refractor with its focal reducer and a ZWO ASI 533-MC camera on an equatorial mount that were sending us images. We used the Seestars to track the partial phases and we removed the solar filter from the refractor for some great images of the Sun's corona during totality. It was awesome to see the corona with several obvious prominences during totality.
     The combination of the SV550 with the ZWO 533MC, a 50 mm guide scope, an ASI AIR controller, and a Skywatcher EQ6-R equatorial mount make a solid astrophotography rig. It is also portable enough that it all fits in a few cases for travel.