Plastic Surgery

Dr. Gordon Telepun is a board certified plastic surgeon. He ended up in the Tennessee Valley as his surgical training continued to move him South. He completed 5 years of general surgery training in Baltimore, Maryland at the University of Maryland Hospital. He spent 2 years in Richmond, Virginia doing a plastic surgery residency at Medical College of Virginia. And from 1992 to 1993 he did an additional fellowship year of training in breast reconstruction and cosmetic surgery at Baptist Hospital, in Nashville, Tennessee. In July of 1993, he brought the specialty of plastic surgery to Decatur General Hospital. Since that time he has been in solo private practice specializing in reconstructive surgery of the breast and cosmetic breast and body contouring

Solar Eclipses

Although there are “eclipse chasers” that have witnessed more solar eclipse than Dr. Telepun, very few has spent as much time working out ways to help others enjoy the spectacle. After his first eclipse in 2001, he immediately saw a need for a specialized eclipse timer designed with the eclipse photographer in mind. He developed the first software app of its kind, which was an eclipse “talking timer” that was programmed for Windows 98 and Windows Pocket PC. It was used successfully in 2002. This concept was greatly improved due to the power of mobile devices and it was released as a mobile app, Solar Eclipse Timer, in 2017 for the Great American Eclipse. It became the #1 timing app used for the 2017 eclipse in the USA.

In addition to being an expert eclipse photographer, Dr. Telepun is dedicated to solar eclipse education. He has authored and posted hours of content on his YouTube channel called, Solar Eclipse Timer, concerning all aspects of solar eclipse observing and photography. He has a special interest in the partial phase phenomena, the interesting things that happen as the Sun is being obscured by the Moon.

In a book recently published by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific called “Celebrating the 2017 Great American Eclipse: Lessons Learned from the Path of Totality”, Dr. Telepun has contributed two scientific articles. One article concerns the science of shadow bands based on observations taken in the southeast and on this article he has three NASA co-authors. The second concerns the phenomena of sharp and fuzzy shadow edges during the partial phases of an eclipse.