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Ask Slashdot: How Did You Experience The Solar Eclipse?
NASA claims they set a record Monday with 40 million views of their eclipse coverage (12.1 million unique) and more than 2 million simultaneous views. Now Slashdot reader xmas2003 asks: "What did /.'ers do to experience this rare incredibly cool event and how did it turn out?"
SmarterEveryDay Destin gets great geek cred for watching the ISS transit the eclipsed sun [YouTube] while we were fortunate to have an incredible experience on 40 acres of farmland watching the Total Solar Eclipse near Tryon, Nebraska -- here's a complete video of [a darkening crowd watching] the totality event from the middle of nowhere. While the pics/video are cool, the real-life experience of actually being there in person is even 100X better -- highly recommend you try to attend a future total solar eclipse!.
In my town it was cloudy all morning -- though I got a postcard from friends experiencing "the path of totality" in Idaho City. But how about you? How did you experience this week's solar eclipse?
In my town it was cloudy all morning -- though I got a postcard from friends experiencing "the path of totality" in Idaho City. But how about you? How did you experience this week's solar eclipse?
from the other side of the planet, you insensitive clod!
Generally ignored as much coverage as possible due to over saturation.
Did I miss something?
Near centerline, 2 mins 41 seconds of totality.
It was easy finding a location just before the eclipse and getting in. Getting out, on the other hand...11 hours to drive 250 miles to Indianapolis afterwards. I-69 completely jammed.
Great experience except someone decided to start shooting fireworks during totality. It's not like there needed to be anything extra...
I experienced it with my eyes. 70% eclipsed from where I am. Always amazing to see.
There was a solar eclipse? Are you sure? That seems like the kind of thing you would see in the news before it happens. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Drive from PA to SC with my 9yr old daughter. Amazing experience. About 1:50 of totality. We could have gone further south, but we positioned ourselves about a mile from the I95 northbound ramp. As soon as totality ended we drove like hell and actually beat the traffic horror I read about for weeks. Long ass day but we'll worth it.
Similar strategy for me as well , but only 2.5 hours drive. Packed up wife and kids at 4 am, got to a SC State Park at 6:30 with about 10 cars already in line and within minutes 20 more behind us. Hung out for the day, a bit hot but not too bad, and packed up just before the eclipse so we could bolt quickly. We beat the traffic nightmare but had already planned to avoid the main corridors (this was one time I ignored Waze, cause it didn't know what was coming)
The eclipse itself was an awesome experience. Some drama as clouds came and went, catching it occasionally as it progressed, not knowing if we'd see the totality. Just before totality, huge clearing of that area of the sky! So glad my kids could experience it. It got a fair amount darker out than I expected.
The Site:
A small Eastern-Tennessee elementary school used the event as a fundraiser for a new playground; we parked in one of the student's back yards across the street. Their family was also raising money by taking $10 donations for parking. There were perhaps two or three-hundred people there; some from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa...
The Experience:
Biblical.
The psychology of the thing, an almost absurd contrast between plodding adult patience, genuine childlike wonder, and an alarming "first time on LSD" sort of giddiness, was probably the aspect which most affected me.
At first we would take momentary glances through our safety glasses to periodically check up on the disk of the sun, and the moon's glacially slow transit across its surface. No one really seemed to know exactly what to expect, but we knew the basics of the ultimate destination, and we cheerfully passed the time via anticipatory conversation with strangers, taking turns glancing through special solar-telescopes, and retreating to the school cafeteria to escape the 90F degree southern heat and humidity while we watched totality come and go in Oregon on the TV.
I think we all started to realize the potential scope of things at about 70% eclipse. The reduced direct orange light from the partially obscured Sun suddenly became apparent to most of us at about the same time. Everything was just a little dimmer and flatter, and noticeably bluer, since the surrounding sky was still very much lit by scattered atmospheric light from far away places where the sun was not obstructed.
There was this group-epiphany that seemed to sweep through the crowd as we collectively came to appreciate that we had no idea of just how subtle and alien the effects would be. It became clear that we simply had no idea where this was going, whereas before this moment we were completely unaware of just how much we didn't know. Everybody started to act a little weird. Direct conversation between strangers - surprisingly little to do with the eclipse - took on a quirky sort of giddiness which gradually amplified in relation to the intensity of this bizarre light that we were standing in. The light was dimming at a rate that was too subtle to notice, our eyes were adjusting to the lower light levels. About every ten minutes or so someone would remark and we'd all realize how much dimmer it had gotten and our giddiness would increase accordingly.
There was an uncharacteristically cool breeze. People were animated, curious, and exploratory. Shadows cast on flat surfaces started to take on a crescent shape which mirrored the present shape of the now fingernail-clipping of a sun. An older gentleman approached us to share a photo-text from his niece of a honeycomb pattern of bright crescent projections on the sidewalk from a pasta colander; his eyes were bright and empathic like someone on LSD.
The charge in the air was almost frightening. Everyone was running around the yard pointing like 7 year-old's at myriad disparate phenomena with frenzied enthusiasm. Meanwhile, the 7 year-old's seemed to be observing everything going on around them with the poise and composure of normal adults. It is a real struggle to put the experience of the light into words - it was most definitely daytime, as if on a cloudy day, but everything was different - Shadows were cast both by the sliver of direct light that remained from the Sun, and the surrounding blue sky which was rapidly beginning to outshine it. It felt like being inside of a 1970's Kodak color photograph of a backyard barbecue.
Suddenly, like kids in an auditorium spontaneously and chaotically coming to order at the sound of their principal, everyone fell silent as nature proceeded to lose it's collective mind all around us.
Cicadas began singing in the grass. Butterflies and dragonflies began to scatter. Killdeer couples flew overhead and made evening calls, on their way back to their nests. It occurred to me at that moment that this is what was happening to us as well: Our bodies and
Looking out my window while working
We'll make great pets
Went from NH to NE -- North Platte, in southwest Nebraska, to be precise. (Caught some stops like Niagara Falls and Mount Rushmore -- not to mention, say, the world's largest rocking chair and Wall Drug.) And I have to say that, to my surprise, totality was cooler than I had anticipated. After watching it, headed to Denver airport, where I hit the only traffic of note the entire trip: Denver rush hour.
If you missed this one, try to catch the 2024. Really. Totality is just that cool -- though all too brief.
I visited some family in South Carolina, and some other friends of the family converged there as well. We basically had a little picnic, set up some cameras, and then watched the shrinking Sun with our glasses.
Even at ten minutes prior, it was eerie! Dark as evening, but with the Sun still seventy degrees overhead. I've never experienced conditions like it in my life. The temperature was noticeably cooler, as well.
And then, totality itself! We were on the southern edge of the path, so only about a minute thirty of totality, but my goodness, they should have sent a poet! The sky was as dark as night, but the horizon was lit by the sunlight that made it around the Moon -- not red like a usual sunset, but blue! And of course, the hole in the sky where the Sun used to be.
Even knowing in advance that it would be happening, there are no words to describe the awe we felt. I can hardly begin to understand the panic that people must have felt before we understood what caused them!
Interestingly, because we saw the eclipse from a small farm, we could see the reactions of some non-human animals as well. Chickens went inside their roost during totality (and then came back outside as soon as it was done, no worse for wear), and the gnats all went to ground (and then came back with a vengeance when it was over). We didn't notice any other creatures reactions, so maybe it was over too quickly for them to be concerned. (Incidentally, some neighbors were out of their minds over whether they should get eclipse glasses for their animals...no need to worry, they've been dealing with eclipses for millions of years before we domesticated them.)
Wherever you are in the world, keep your ears open for when the next eclipse is coming near you, and make the effort to see totality -- it's worth it! I'm already looking forward to 2024!
From my front yard. Tree shadows were awesome to watch.
Drove from south central Wisconsin to St. Clair, MO (a small town of 5000 which was on the center line). Friendly folks there, who set aside 7 different areas to view the eclipse (baseball and soccer fields, church properties, or just along the streets.) A police officer stopped by a few times to hand out free glasses to anyone who didn't have them, and there was an EMT vehicle nearby to make sure people were okay (it was 95 most of the day, until the sun went away for a bit...) We had a fantastic time, and met a number of folks from as far away as Albuquerque and somewhere in Texas. Viewing was also great.
- Mike
I and 11,000 other people saw it at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in western Nebraska. It lasted 2 minutes 23 seconds. The park is big enough that it didn't seem overcrowded. There were no artificial lights of any kind during the eclipse, so it was pretty spectacular.
My workplace was close to the center of the path of totality and the company bought glasses for all of us, so a bunch of us went outside and watched it from the parking lot. It was kinda cool.
Not really. I think the biggest drama happened was when apparently some guy near us had a romantic idea to propose to his girlfriend during the totality - and then lost the ring :). Or that at least seemed to be the gist of the "oh crap" discussion that followed.
I live just outside of Charleston, SC, and we had a frog-choker of a rain storm that moved in and obscured the eclipse. My neighbor's rain gauge claimed over 4 inches (10+ cm for you Metric Folks). It was something of a letdown, but I still enjoyed the experience.
Glendo is a tiny town with a population of 205. About 100,000 extra people showed up for the eclipse. The locals were very friendly, and allowed us to observe from the sports field next to the school. They were so taken back by all this, the locals were out videoing the traffic as it arrived, since they had never seen anything like it. The location was perfect. Absolutely clear blue sky. A couple of hot air balloons drifted by just as totality hit. Absolutely breathtaking event. Then, reality hit. We had to make it south through the largest traffic jam in Wyoming history. Well worth it.
Meh, saw one when I was a kid ('79 or whatever) so I guess I'm good.
Travelled from Sweden to Atlanta. On the day of the eclipse we left Atlanta at 8 AM and reached Toccoa at around 12. Had a great time!
According to this item, some people tried to protect their eyes with sunblock: http://nbc4i.com/2017/08/25/pa...
I'll listen to it when the audio book comes out.
I also had my astronomy filters which gave a nice view, turning the solar disc into a blue color for direct viewing. These were a big hit.
When looking away from the sun, you could see that shadows were fuzzy and odd looking, and sunlight filtering through tree leaves would show thousands of crescents on the ground.
When we hit as close to totality as we were going to get, it was fairly dark. It looked like late evening, but without the reddish color shift of a normal evening sun. A lot of birds started sqwaking, especially some pileated woodpeckers that visit our feeders. An adult was making a lot of noise, my best guess is a parent telling a young one it was time to get home for the evening. Actually got pretty loud.
Then almost like a switch, it started getting much brighter. A pretty enjoyable time. We all chatted for a while longer, then headed back to whatever we were doing before the eclipse.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
We were in the 90% zone for the recent solar eclipse and were entirely unwilling to make the drive to totality.
However, I was intrigued by the various articles that spoke to the idea that you couldn't shoot photos without filters, that cellphones couldn't be used, etc.
So, contrarian that I am, I shot DSLR photos without filters, and cellphone shots as well.
No corona shots (90% zone means the corona was never accessible) but I got some adequate shots, some of which are online here.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Enjoying the near complete silence until my jackass neighbor started blasting "Total Eclipse of the Heart" for way too long.
If you ask me that's not a good sign.
#DeleteFacebook
Seriously, I made a pinhole viewer out of a 10 foot piece of ABS pipe. I got a really nice image of 93% totality.
Have gnu, will travel.
We did lots of pre-planning, selected Jackson Hole and got reservations about a year ago for eight of us. Weather looked iffy for a bit but was clear for the eclipse. Crowds were not bad in town. The locals called it just slightly busier than a normal summer weekend. We suspect that there are only so many rooms available and people got scared off by the hype. Outside town in the Tetons it was a different story.
Took some photos (mostly automated to not miss the experience). https://flic.kr/s/aHsm6RakMj
I also uploaded about 150 shots to the Eclipse Megamovie: https://eclipsemega.movie/
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
We have relatives who live in the path of totality, so we drove from Seattle out to Wyoming and stayed with them. From their yard we watched the total eclipse, and I recorded it two ways:
1080P Close-up: https://youtu.be/LD0sAIavU-A
360 Video: https://youtu.be/ZyymEkOblGM
William George
I had to convince my wife to take the day off, and it worked. We had three different locations in mind which were each in totality and about 2.5 hours from home, so we watched weather.com up until we had to make a decision and leave.
It was to be partly cloudy to mostly cloudy in all locations at the time the eclipse was going into totality, but at the last minute, one location (in KY) changed to sunny, so we made the decision and took off after dropping our son at school (he has already started school here).
It worked out perfectly. We had little traffic and found a clearing in some remote corn field where we stumbled across 8 other adults who were some extremely nice people and shared their space with us.
We had 2:37 seconds of darkness, got some great images, and the other group we were with shared champagne while listening to Dark Side of the Moon. It was amazing and we both drank in the experience.
Needless to say, my wife was grateful for talking her into taking the day off.
I've wanted to see a total solar eclipse since I was 10 years old. It took 51 years. Flew to family in KC. Drove to friends in Hebron, NE. Camped out in a church. Chased sunshine for 3 hours to Ravenna, NE, pop. 1360. Pop. increased by several hundred with people from every state, Europe, China, Argentina.... It was awesome (too bad that word is so over-used.) Pictures can't capture it.
Afterwards spent the week in Myrtle Beach.
All in all it was a great trip.
In today's parlance that means hosting a LAN party and yelling that someone is handing out free iPhone 8s in the parking lot while making sure every lan cable is laid out in a pattern to create tripwires?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I didn't, along with >95% of humans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's a partial eclipse - but in this 10-second video, got a really nice image of a reflection of the eclipse at 4k - the sun/moon combo rotates around eachother, as clouds do their dance. Watch full-screen and look at the upper-left, rather than the direct sun image.
It made for a nice cool day in Florida. Definitely looked like late evening, even well outside the totality area.
Ryan Fenton
And here I was thinking those shrooms were some kind of powerful! You know, making it look like some massive object was moving in front of the sun and all. Needless to day, I sketched out.
I tend to rant.
Took Amtrak to Columbia, SC from Miami (adding, "fun train trip" to "eclipse"). The train hit a guy on a bike & got delayed ~3.5 hours (tragic, but it meant we had a few more hours to sleep, and got to see SC in daylight instead of arriving at 4am). Got to the hotel at 9, had breakfast, then took a nap for another hour or so.
Spent Sunday at the SC State Museum (an impressive, top-notch museum, I might add), grabbed dinner, hit the observatory, then partied in downtown Columbia (not exactly South Beach, but fun nonetheless).
Monday, went back downtown to watch the eclipse. Enjoyed the "pre-clipse", started recording the crowd ~10 minutes before totality (exposure-locked, so it wouldn't keep increasing the exposure time as the sun dimmed). Was slightly disappointed by relative non-darkness... it was more like "twilight, right after the sun dips below the horizon (but without the red hue... kind of like an older dimmable LED)", and the corona was a lot more prominent than I thought it would be (frankly, I was expecting the sun to be more blocked... it actually looked more like a half-total, half-annular eclipse). Was initially worried about clouds, but the sky totally cleared up around 2:15 & stayed clear until well after totality ended (followed by a downpour about an hour later).
The trip home was uneventful & fun. The crowd at Columbia Station was probably the biggest in Amtrak history. All in all, a fun & worthwhile trip. Definitely planning to go see the next eclipse in 2024.
Yes Google routes you on major roads...
The thing is at this point everyone knows that. So many thousands of people took the back roads. There is a reason they are not major roads, they cannot handle any large volume of backup without huge delays... in some small towns in Nebraska we had a line of cars that took about an hour to go smoke or two.
I was able to mitigate that somewhat by taking dirt farm roads. But they often dead end eventually and you have to get on the minor roads at least to pass through some areas.
Mind you it was better than the major roads still but you shouldn't feel like it's going to make the thing a breeze.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I used a cereal box with a hole poked in it. I saw a little crescent - I think - or maybe my hole wasn't perfectly round. Honestly, I was underwhelmed with the experience. Thankfully some people with better gear shared pretty amazing photos.
I went camping in South Carolina with my cronies, in a State Park campground *directly under the line of totality*.
The place was packed, and people were complaining that the WiFi was slow. Talk about your first world problem. We reserved our spots months in advance.
We went there on Saturday and left on Tuesday to avoid the traffic. The weather cooperated, the view was spectacular.
We had a collection of telescopes and big telephoto lenses, some great food and illegal potables.
Good times.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Which is actually the site of one of the bigger Eclipse festivals in the north west coast. We didn't actually choose that location specially. We just happen to live about an hour and a half away anyway, and we just went driving to find a place to watch. Turns out a few tens of thousands of people did too, and it caused a Hurricane Katrina level traffic problems on those two lane little US highways up there. And I was actually IN Katrina as a truck drive stuck running relief supplies.
At the end of the day it was still worth it IMHO. Nasty traffic, but why not spend the time on something that's functionally a once in a life time event?
Someone brought a few pairs of glasses. We took about 5 minutes out and looked at it. STFU, GBTW.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The girlfriend and I had talked about it, but didn't make a decision until Friday afternoon. We both asked for Monday off and got it. On Sunday, around noon, we hopped in the car and drove towards southern Illinois because the forecasts in that direction were best. I had been considering west too, and had planned for rough areas in either direction that would give us enough time to get back home so that we could make it to work on Tuesday.
I didn't have an exact spot in mind, so I told my GPS to take me towards Mount Vernon, IL, which is close to, but north of, the totality band. The idea was to keep my options open so that I could head towards Missouri or Kentucky if things didn't look good on Monday morning.
Things got a bit hairy on Sunday night. We didn't have reservations anywhere, of course. Also, it was getting late, but we were still much farther away than we wanted to be. We ended up getting a room in Springfield by pure luck - we apparently called just minutes after someone else cancelled.
Everyone in Springfield warned us to get on the road by 7:00 if we wanted to be anywhere in the band by noon. We were close, maybe 7:30.
We still didn't have any specific place in mind, so I was looking for towns away from the interstate, but still connected to state or county highways, in case weather made us move. We changed GPS destinations many times, using it as "travel towards" instead of "going to".
We did a lot of rural driving, but ended up on I-57. The interstates were funny. It would be nearly stopped for a while, then clear sailing for miles at 70+ MPH. I thought many times about getting off earlier than I did, and I'm glad I decided to stick it out.
We were near the center of the band when the girlfriend had to pee (again) so I took the next exit and headed towards town. Within a mile or so, I saw a gravel parking lot with a "Private Parking" sign that looked 50 years old. One car was in it, and they were setting up chairs and a cooler. It looked like the perfect spot.
On the way towards town, which turned out to be Herrin, we kept our eyes open looking for other spots, and saw some good ones, but none better.
At the gas station, I was surprised that they weren't selling eclipse glasses. In general, I was surprised that there weren't roadside stands selling them anywhere along my route. I had a set of brazing goggles that I had swapped #14 lenses into, but there were two of us, so I was looking for another pair. The guy at the gas station said that a hair salon and the local banks had been handing them out before, but wasn't sure if they still had any.
The salon was closed, and the bank we tried was out. But, one of the tellers had an extra pair and she dug them out from the depths of her purse. We tried giving her money for them, but she wouldn't take any.
We went back to the parking lot that we had seen on the way in, and this time there were 3 cars. The car we parked next to had a couple of guys from Argonne National Labs in Chicago that had also come out on short notice. This was shortly after noon. A few more cars wandered in, maybe a dozen total. Mostly Illinois plates, one Indiana, one Wisconsin and two Minnesota.
My girlfriend thinks I'm nuts because I talk to strangers, and I didn't want to disappoint her, so I wandered around meeting the neighbors, comparing equipment, etc. My projection box was well liked even though it was very small. Hole quality is the most important factor, and then length. My box was short, only about 15 inches long, but I had poked my hole in a sheet of aluminum foil with a fine needle that I had deburred and polished. I also had a piece of bright white office paper on the inside of the box for viewing. The image was tiny, but very clear, and bright. The Argonne guys had a stack of used welding filters they were using. None of them were #14, but they had researched it and got pretty good results by combining lesser filters.
The eclipse itself was really cool. I'm very glad I
See that "Preview" button?
You can't really get a round hole in a fibrous material like cardboard. It's best to just make an oversized hole, tape some aluminum foil over it and then carefully poke a pinhole through the foil.
Extended family members converged from around the southeast to the parking lot of the First Baptist Church of Cross Hill, SC, which is about 100 yards from the center line of totality. We brought a picnic lunch including eclipse-themed items such as Sunkist cola and Moon-Pies. We choose Cross Hill since it is not near any major cities or highways, thereby avoiding crowds and gridlock.
I brought a telescope and a white sheet to spread on the ground in order to see the shadow bands. The weather was partly cloudy, but the sun was clear of clouds for totality.
Photo of totality: https://sqlite.org/tmp/total-e...
I had previously been at the center line of the annular eclipse of 1984 as it traversed the campus of Georgia Tech. A total eclipse is much better. To be able to look up and see what appears to be a hole in the sky is something you do not want to miss. If you have never witnessed a total solar eclipse before, I encourage you to add this to your "bucket list".
Location: Baltimore-DC region
Eyewear: Didn't get glasses in time. Didn't make it a priority because we weren't getting totality, but now I wish I did. I'm going to order a set to have on hand.
How watched: I took off work, came home, brought up NASA TV on the computer (Nasa's DC raw feed was broken, disappointingly). Kept looking outside, and yes, the light became weird. Things became dimmer, like under heavy late-day cloud cover, yet shadows were still visible. Then it started brightening. I didn't bother making the pinhole projector. Did it once years ago in college, was underwhelmed. Do plan to get quality eclipse/solar glasses going forward.
It was neat.
My neighbor is certain that a large number of people who watched the eclipse got sick from it. Such an astral event cannot avoid having its effect on earthlings here below, and it's probably kundalini sickness with improper alkaline balance that makes you vulnerable to the cosmic rays.
Anyway I don't know, that's just what she conversed while talking to her spirit animal or something.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Now that's an experience...
... with a homemade cardbox set up to view a partial solar eclipse. It wasn't darker and cooler in my rural area. :( This would had been my second time in my life for any solar eclipses so far.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Clear skies but only about 60% total. Observed using a small telescope used in projection-mode (for safe viewing). I also took continuous precision frequency measurements of radio station WWV near Boulder Colorado on a frequency of 10.0 MHz. Did this for 8 hours on the day of the eclipse and the day before (for control). My measurements clearly showed the ionospheric Doppler shifting of the signal from WWV as the moving zone of totality crossed over the radio signal path from WWV to my location. Uploaded almost 1.4 GB of data to the Ham SCI community at zenodo.org.
My wife and I were amazed at the strange lighting effect of the reduced sunlight near maximum (60%). Talk about a pale sun! Many of our garden flowers closed, at least partially, and all the birds seemed to disappear too.
You drove your motorcycle up to Glendo, Wyoming, to see the total eclipse of the sun...
.
.
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You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you
Don't you
Don't you
https://www.facebook.com/Nambe...
We were around 75%. Didn't make any plans, grabbed a carboard box, poked a hole in it to make my own quick and dirty pinhole camera to view the crescent, and went out and looked.
Did glance up a couple times more than I probably should have, but it was intermittently overcast so didn't stare into the sun.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It was cloudy. One of my daughters and I made a big cardboard pinhole camera viewing box. Tested it early in the morning and it worked great. We watched the clock and went outside to view the beginning of the eclipse only to find that clouds were rolling in and if we were able to glimpse the sun's disc, it was greatly dimmed by the increasing haze and clouds. By the time the maximum eclipse in our area--about 85%--should have been visible, the cloud cover had darkened the sky more than the eclipse ever would have.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
If Trump can do it, why couldn't I?
Didn't see much of anything. Still don't?
I was working near the Alabama coast in Baldwin County and it was totally cloudy with light rain falling during the whole time. You couldn't even make out where the sun was through the clouds, not even a bright spot.
I travelled from Maryland to Oregon to attend the Symbiosis music and art festival that was taking place on private land in the middle of the Ochoco National Forest outside of Prineville, Oregon. I had been to a total solar eclipse before in Turkey in 2006, and this was a reunion of sorts as I was meeting up with some friends I hadn't seen since then.
I brought a lightweight tracking mount with me (Fornax Lightrack II) and mounted a Canon 5D Mk. 2 camera with EF 400mm 5.6L prime lens + 1.4x teleconverter on it, which tracked the sun and took a photo every 30 seconds through a 77mm diameter filter from Thousand Oaks Optical. When I get enough time, I'm going to string these into a time lapse. I removed the filter during totality and started taking bracketed shots, and replaced the filter onto the lens after totality.
Oregon's a really nice state. I travelled around a bit after the festival and the night skies here are to die for. Here's some shots that I have up so far. https://daleghent.com/gallery/...
It turns out I was already planning a road trip to St. Louis, MO anyway, to visit with family and friends. So when I mentioned arriving the day before the eclipse, a couple of my old friends mentioned they owned property out in Steelville, MO (about an hour's drive from St. Louis itself), and we were welcome to stay the night there on Sunday to watch the eclipse on Monday, as it was in the path of totality.
I brought my Celestron Nexstar telescope, a solar filter for it, and the camera adapter for my Canon 70d, and was able to get a pretty cool photo of the eclipse right at the moment of totality - along with a number of other photos of the progression of the eclipse.
We also had a couple of great home-cooked meals and spent some time riding 4 wheelers around their property. so an enjoyable day all the way around.
I drove from New Hampshire to Tennessee to watch the eclipse from a public park in Goodlettsville. I have had "total eclipse" on my bucket list since High School. The best part was that my children and grandchildren joined me for this experience.
Made reservations last winter for dead center. Arrived a couple days before the eclipse and left a couple days afterwards. No traffic problems (other than the usual construction delays), but it was a day's drive from Michigan. Could put on eclipse glasses and watch from in the pool, or sit on the side and take pictures. All the sites were taken in the private campground, but it certainly was not crowded.
It was overcast and raining here. Illinois is too far to travel. I'm waiting for 2099, when the path of totality will pass over my home.
My fun was watching the traffic jams on the various states' traffic cams.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
My wife and I drove to Kingstree, SC from Sunset Beach, NC. Easy drive of about 2 hours. Went into a McD's to get some coffee and take a ..... There was a nice grassy, shady spot between McD's and a Bank so we just set up camp for 2 hours. A number of people joined us and the crowd was real congenial. There was a young couple (20's) from Boston that drove down and an older couple (80's) from Florida. Some people had extra glasses and some had none so they got shared all around. We took picture of each other with our glasses. Surprisingly, it was not very humid and there was a nice gentle breeze. After about 2 h, it happened behind a very thin cloud, which actually made viewing easier. Lots of oohs! and aaahs! I'd been telling my wife that there was a huge difference between 99.9 and 100%. Up until it happened she didn't believe me. Now she's a believer. Street lights came on and you could see Venus although it was almost straight up. We didn't see any stars and there was a notable absence of bird and bug sounds. And then it was over. A four hour trip back to the triangle area took about 45 minutes longer than it would normally. Overall, a great day to be alive.
I live in CA but happened to be in Australia last week. The view there was phenominal.
The sky started to go dim at around 6pm. By 7pm we were in totality, and the whole thing lasted over 12 hours. Incredible.
Don't have a TV, so watched it on the news on my laptop. Saved me the crowds and the expenses of driving to a place along the path of the eclipse
We live in Franklin, TN, just south of the edge of the zone of occlusion. Actually, we could hit the south edge of the zone with a 15 minute drive. But I wanted to be closer to center line.
We went to Gallatin, TN, and decided to go to Bledsoe Creek State Park. I would realize later that the center line passes through the north side of the park, which explained the large number of people there. The park was closed with police guarding the entrance, and cars parked along the road outside.
We found a historic school house with a few other folks there, large open yard, and no street lights. Perfect. Cario, TN:
https://goo.gl/maps/EDBEDPj1XY...
Getting there was easy, getting out took a lot longer.
We had maximum time there, over 2 and a half minutes. I got a couple of pictures, but mostly just looked at it. It reminds you of what the word "awesome" was made for.
Do you have ESP?
Took my camera to work, stepped outside to snap photos about every 10-15 minutes. Took about 30, then stitched the photos together from start to finish. https://flic.kr/s/aHsm3hyXWX Nikon D7200, cheap Tamron 70-300mm lens, snap-on-the-lens solar filter, all hand held.
You need to penis your neighbor. Always, and I mean always, stick your dick in crazy.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Great landscape video. Yeah, thats what a site looks like in a good totality.
https://www.google.com/maps/@3... Me and my dog had all of Yellow Bald Mountain to ourselves right up to just before totality when a family made the climb up also. There was a moment when I had quite the vertigo experience due to the odd light filtering down thru the canopy as the totality ended. My dog would have slept thru the whole thing if I'd let her..... ;p
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
View of corona was beautiful. But, I had forgotten that we get to see the chromosphere too and that was ethereal. I saw it as an evanescent pink/crimson ring around the photosphere. Do any of you who saw totality remember it well enough to describe?
I took a nap instead of standing in the yard and looking at the moon cross the sun. Been there, seen that.
We were planning to go to Nebraska, and specifically to the road (state route 92) that runs through Tryon and hews closely to the centerline, but a deteriorating forecast for that area caused us to make the trek to Unity, Oregon. I am glad to see that the weather was fine in Nebraska (as it was where we were.)
Our reasons for picking both areas were: 1) statistically, a high probability of clear skies in the morning at this time of year; 2) a clear view of the sky (checked using Street View); 3) roads running along the centerline of totality, so we could hope to dodge clouds if we had to; 4) somewhere likely to have a low density of viewers, so that it would be possible to move, if necessary, without being caught in traffic. When switching to Oregon, we also considered wildfire locations and forecast wind direction (the forest service has frequently-updated fire location maps and reports.)
We printed maps showing roads and the path of totality, in case cellphone navigation failed us (which it did, but on account of the location's remoteness, not service overload.)
We were least certain about the density of viewers, but the roads were so empty as we approached our destination that I worried that I had made a huge navigation error!
One thing that only people who've seen totality can understand is that almost seeing a total eclipse (99.x%) is so different from a total eclipse, they should come up with another name for it. For example the difference in ambient light between 99% and 100% is a factor of 10,000. Even 1 minute before totality you'd be tempted to say, "Meh. I've seen this before." Then you hit 100% and scream "Holy #)@* God tore the sun from the sky and replaced it with a portal to another dimension!"
So this is why my wife's trip to Minot with the UW-Green Bay astronomers on Feb 26, 1979 led to her convincing me to go to Antigua on Feb 26, 1998 (1 Saros later) where I asked her to marry me during the second diamond ring while the Montserrat volcano smoldered in the half-light. We planned our honeymoon around the 1999 total eclipse which passed through Europe (rained out in Stuttgart.) And finally planned to take our children and 21 other family members and friends from Wisconsin to the Kentucky Dam Village campground near Paducah. We scouted out the beach, dam, boat launch and considered the Golden Pond Observatory and Planetarium or one of the several other public viewings between Hopkinsville and Carbondale but decided on walking to a clearing at the south edge of the campground where oak trees would provide shade in the time between first contact and totality. We set up a few tarps in the grass (thankfully fire-ants have not yet gotten a solid foothold here but ticks have.) We set up a sun tent for the kids.
My brother-in-law is a professional photographer who brought a Sony DSLR, lens and filter and we found even better equipped astrophotographers within the park and along the dam so even though this was my 4th totality, I didn't feel any pressure to take photos. We considered flying a drone, but we were too near an airport. I considered leaving a CHDK interval timer script, android FP5Cam intervalometer and Wemos D1 mini temperature logger running but these weren't as much of a priority as enjoying it as much as I did the previous 3 totalities. There is only so much you can do in 2 minutes and 20 odd seconds.
The leaves of the oaks cast crescent shadows across the tent and everyone during the partial phases. I'd bought a pack of used cards from the Menominee casino where they had neatly cut holes to mark that the cards were no longer legal for gambling. 52 eclipse projectors for 50 cents! I handed them out to our gang and to our campground neighbors. Totality hit everyone with a wave of wonder. The hot whirring sound of cicadas was replaced with the nocturnal chirp of crickets. My niece's boyfriend asked to look through the telescope during totality. At first I explained that it's too hard to aim (I had no tracker) but then I decided to give it a try so he and I and my niece got a brief glance. I handed binoculars around to a few people.
One of the artists in our group compared it to a weird photoshop filter, a sci-fi movie. "WOW No one told me!" It reminded me of the scene in Contact where Ellie sees something indescribably beautiful that no one else will ever know. This was the most photographed total eclipse in history, drones, DSLRs, iPhones, 4k 60FPS video, VR... and yet I have not found anything that does it justice.
Imagine if sunsets were rare events that only one in every 1000 people had ever witnessed. Describing it would be like explaining the color green to a blind person. Photos of sunsets work for us because nearly everyone has witnessed a sunset but very few have witnessed totality. Ray Bradbury's All summer in a day was published in 1954, just three months before a total solar eclipse would have been visible from Northern Wisconsin, a few hours drive from his native Waukegan, Illinois. Like Ellie in Contact, Margo in this short story has witness
of the maximum moon coverage, so no eclipse for us
First off, getting up into the path of totality was fine.
We drank a lot the night before. There was a lot of history talk because they're huge nerds.
At the event I set up a quick'n'easy altar with some fancy cloth and a C'thulhu bobble-head. During the eclipse, we got a video of us sacrificing a heart.... of artichoke. So... you're welcome for
And then we road eternal, shiny, and chrome on the Eclipse road! Services were closed. Roads were clogged. We spent hours at a standstill. Now... the weekend before, I decked out my car with temporary peel-off paint and gave it some decals from MadMax. I dressed up as a raider with spikes on some (way oversized) football shoulder-pads, and a facemask, and a metalic arm thingy. We had nerf weapons and I wanted my crew to lean out the windows with the tiki torches as thundersticks, but they weren't up for it, and by the time we switched traffic had picked up. So that didn't happen. Also, the shoulder pads were WAY too big for a long-ass car-ride. And the spikes had a non-negligible risk of tearing up my upholstery, so that got ditched real early.
The 3 hour drive turned into a 6 hour drive and everyone was tired by the end. But with spare guzzoline and plenty of agricola, we survived!
(Also, the peel-off paint works fine.... as long as the coverage is enough. MASK IT, and spray it thick. Otherwise the tiny specks don't rub off nearly as easy as the thick stuff. ugh.)
Had reservations at a Hotel in Lincoln city for the night before the eclipse (made them almost a year ahead) as I lived in Portland, which was North of totality. I had been living in the the path of totality in '79, But except for a a brief glimpse during partiality through a gap in the clouds that closed up quickly (a friend and I actually chased that gap in a car,), I wasn't able to see it. This was extremely disappointing as I had been anticipating it for years. I was also into photography at the time (I even had my own darkroom set up), and had hoped to get a picture. We started to get warnings of the possibility of hours long traffic jams due to the influx of people coming to see the eclipse. They were telling people that you should pack extra water, food etc, in case you got stuck on the road. Just in case, we left extra early Sunday morning and packed a cooler. It turned out not to be needed as traffic was light to and In Lincoln City. (actually lighter than normal for a weekend). It seems that all the warnings scared people away. It was sunny when we arrived, clouded up later in the afternoon, but cleared off again in the evening. We went to bed early to have time for breakfast before the show started (partiality started around 9:05 AM). We woke to heavy fog. The Hotel clerk had said the day before that high winds were predicted for Monday that they should blow things clear by eclipse time. We at breakfast and went out to find a good view to the Southeast. It was still foggy by the time the Moon first started to cover the Sun, and the we kept losing sight of it in the fog. For a while I saw some blue sky overhead which gave me hope that the fog was starting to clear. Then the wind freshened a bit. But instead of blowing out of the fog it blew it in more thickly. With twenty minutes to totality, it was beginning to look like weather conditions were going to get the bet of me again. Then I heard a voice behind me say "Excuse me". I turned to see a sanitation truck driver who had come over from his truck parked in the Hotel lot. " You know that its not foggy everywhere" He then told us that if we just drove down the highway a bit, turned left and drove up the road for 3/4 of a mile, the sky was clear. I grabbed the camera and the tripod, and we jumped into the car. Sure enough after following his directions we soon saw blue sky and sunlight. We came across a pullout with other cars in it and with room left for our car. I got the camera and tripod set up again. I didn't have a solar filter for the camera (it wasn't designed for them), but I got a couple of shots off by holding my eclipse glasses in front the lens. As totality got closer, we started to notice that the fog we thought we left behind was staring to drift in from the West. Everyone at the pull out were basically trying to will it to hold back for just a bit longer. It must have worked, because the Sun's photosphere finally slipped behind the Sun and the corona burst forth. I snapped of a couple of quick shots, just pausing long enough to see if I got anything. Then sooner than I wanted, the Sun poked out from behind the Moon, we saw the diamond ring effect, and it was over. I went over to check on what I had captured on the camera. A handful of people came over to ask if I got anything. I showed them what I got and ended up with a collection of e-mail addresses and requests for copies. They had all tried to get photos with their cell phones and none of them had turned. In the end, with the aid of a helpful stranger, I got that eclipse photo that I had missed out on over 38 years later.
I was fortunate enough to experience the eclipse while under parachute up in Madras, OR. There were a total of 23 of us on the flight. In comparing notes to the people that were on the ground we had one additional experience that they missed - we could see the passage of the umbra across the ground as totality started and ended
I had eclipse goggles at hand, but should I have trusted Amazon's procurement procedures?
Instead, I placed my binoculars over my head - fat end toward the sun - small end toward the ground - and aimed the lunar/solar image onto my shadow that was cast on my patio.
It turns out that I could have trusted the eclipse goggles because four other people with me used said goggles with no blinding results.
However, next eclipse, I'll still use my binoculars.
... but right at the moment of eclipse stupid moon came up and prevented me from witnessing this magnificent event by passing right in front of the sun, that stupid bitch.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I rounded up a couple of astronomy freaks and on a thumbs up on clear(ish) weather report on Friday for "partly cloudy" on Monday and made the decision to head down to White House, Tennessee -- smack dab in the middle of the totality track. We headed out from Buffalo, NY on Saturday to Pittsburgh, then Sunday to Cincinnati, leaving early Monday morning for Tennessee. No problems.
Got a prime spot at 7AM no sweat in a shelter in a local park with electricity, restrooms and water. By around 10am or so the park was filled to capacity and then some. Tallied license plates from 30 other states. Met all sorts of random people and shared stories. A few wandering clouds floated by but they were gone by totality, just some haze from the high humidity.
Totality was more exciting than I could have imagined! No fancy equipment other than a beach chair and plenty of refreshing fluids. Excitement was audible as totality ensued, Park lights turned on, temp dropped to the 50s from almost 90 and the crowd went crazy. Some bozo even fired off a firework in the distance.
Like a black hole in space. No way ANY recording device could capture the experience -- would be like looking at a photograph of earth from orbit. More exciting than the first time I saw the Aurora, Perseids, Milky Way, outer planets or even Hale-Bopp.
Worth the hundreds of miles of driving and 12 hour traffic jam on the return trip to Cincinnati. A solid 8 out of 10 on the astronomical boner scale. Only a live orbital view could top it, IMHO. Maybe they'll have a lottery for one someday.
Finally, just a shout out for the Tennessee weather gods for giving Murphy the bum's rush that day!
I watched the eclipse for more than an hour and a half. Here's how... I sat on my balcony and caught the reflection of the eclipse on the screen of my turned off iPad. I watched that with my polarized sunglasses. Worked great!
Astro
5 total and one anular. My wife has seen 16. Got pics.
The Floyd Tribute that I play with, The Pink Floyd Appreciation Society, performed Dark Side Of The Moon in it's entirety for a crowd of about 5k folks in McMinnville, TN. We let the heart beat at the end run through totality then picked up with Set The Controls For The Hear Of The Sun as good ol' Sol peaked around the other side. Great times were had by all.
Peace of mind isn't at all superficial to technical work, it's the whole thing.
Where we were, was overcast, but only lightly, so we could see the corona through the cloud cover. Just a minute before totality, I pointed out that the eclipse was surrounded by a rainbow ring which was a cool consolation prize.
I was with my family and a friend, and we had rooms in a motel in Columbia, Missouri. (My friend bought the eclipse glasses, and almost forgot them.) We'd had the rooms reserved since March. We arrived on Sunday.
On Monday, another couple of friends in an RV joined us, as their planned viewing spot had clouds forecast. We took up spots in the parking lot.
It was hazy, and I was looking at the partial through the glasses. Then it cleared, about a minute to totality. My friends were looking for heat wave shadows on the parking lot, but I didn't pick out any. It started getting cooler (which was welcome; the heat and humidity were pretty bad).
The corona was beautiful, but I liked the 1979 corona (seen from Winnipeg) better. A wisp of cloud drifted across, which was kinda neat. At the end, we saw the chromosphere, a beautiful reddish color with (I think) some sort of irregularities.
Then, immediately after totality ended, the clouds rolled in in force and I couldn't even see the partial eclipse through my glasses. About three minutes of clear atmosphere, timed extremely well.
I'd wanted to take my wife and son to a total eclipse for years, and I finally got to. I asked my son whether it was worth the drive, and he didn't even bother to come up with a smartass answer (I have raised him well). He's moving to Indianapolis in a few weeks to start a job. If he stays there, we'll visit him in 2024, because that track goes right over Indianapolis.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Fortunately, I live in Nashville which was on the path of totality. So I could view it with friends on the Vanderbilt campus. The university threw a great eclipse-watching party for members of the campus community with a giant outdoor video display showing NASA streaming videos, a countdown clock. etc. They also provided water, ice cream and plenty of folding chairs. I've heard that clouds obscured totality in downtown Nashville, but at the campus the view was unobstructed and absolutely marvelous! Alas, the camera in my iPhone 7 couldn't handle to contrast even at totality so none of my photos turned out.
I helped three nonprofit organizations, the Nashville Peace and Justice Center, TN Activists, and Earthmatters TN (an environmental organization), put on a free festival at a local park. We were in the path of totality, and the scattered clouds weren't in the way at totality. I got to see the corona.
Google's "quickest path" algorithm still needs work. A couple of years ago, I made the mistake of following Google Map's suggestion to divert onto a back road on a long road trip. It ended up taking two hours longer than if I had taken my usual route. Also, Google Map's estimates of how long it will take to get somewhere are wildly optimistic, to say the least. On a trip from Richmond, Virginia, to Nashville, TN, out of curiosity, I had it estimate how long it would take to walk that distance. It said I could do the trip in 5 days on foot, which means I would have to cover 130 miles a day on foot, for five days, with no rest days. Not even an Olympic athlete could do that!
Finally everybody left me alone from having to put up with their shit and I could get some work done.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I constructed a simple pin-hole camera based on the standard cereal box design, but used a larger amazon box. It had a really nice clear image.
I was more impressed with my more simple viewing experiment. I just put a white piece of paper down and got a piece of cardboard, with a pin hole in it to cast its shadow over the paper. I was surprised how visible the image was and it allowed a bunch of people to watch at once.
One of my coworkers stacked a bunch of welding glass lens to build a monocle that I also tried out for direct viewing.
Here in NJ we didn't get totality, but it was still a very interesting experience.
My wife and I bundled the dogs into the RV and made the trek to John Day, Oregon. The town had mowed a big field next to their airport and run water and sewer lines for RVs.
The airport is on top of a hill, so there was a good view of the surrounding hills. My pictures of the total eclipse itself are on film that I just dropped off at a good photo shop (All the (expurgated) drug stores either don't do film at all any more, or don't return the (redacted) negatives.) but I set up my cell phone pointed west, and got a video of the arriving and departing umbra.
https://youtu.be/R3R-KSQ0tag
Honestly, I was underwhelmed with the experience. Thankfully some people with better gear shared pretty amazing photos.
For about 95% of the time, I was underwhelmed, then when totality hit, it was pretty amazing. I have seen some really good photos, but none of them do justice to seeing it with the naked eye.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
We were in Grand Teton national park, at Jackson Lake Lodge. THis is well north of the center line, so we got about 1 minute 50 seconds of totality. The location was great, on a small hill with full view of the horizon and the Grand Teton mountains. Weather was clear from about 10:00 onwards so we had a great view. There were park rangers with telescopes as well. One of which was a Lunt H2 solar telescope which gives a really impressive view of the surface of the Sun with sunspots, solar flames etc.
The radio amateurs ("hams") organized a big on-the-air event across the MF to lower-VHF spectrum (1.8 - 50 MHz) to make contacts that were monitored, decoded, and signal strengths measured by the extensive automated receiver networks that have developed over the past few years. (Morse (CW), PSK, and FSK modulations can be automatically monitored by SDR (software defined radio) software.) Well over a million automated signal reports were generated and many thousands of contacts were logged and those records submitted. Hundreds of Gbytes of digitized RF spectrum were also collected and are now being transferred to the data group by various means - perhaps a station wagon full of 9-track tapes? - including simply shipping hard drives to the researchers. The sponsor was HamSCI (http://hamsci.org/seqp) and the event was called the Solar Eclipse QSO Party (SEQP - QSO is ham shorthand for "contact"). Data is being collected by a team at Virginia Tech. Initial reviews of the data shows strong effects from the temporary interruption of solar UV which is responsible for creating the various structures in the ionosphere which affect MF/HF/VHF radio wave propagation. This wasn't a surprise but the exact nature of the effects and the correlation to models of ionospheric dynamics is where the most will be learned. It's rare to have such a well-defined and well-measured eclipse. Personally, I operated with a local team up until within ten minutes of totality (my station was on the path of totality this time), then watched visually and for a few minutes longer before resuming operating. The effects of the shadow moving across the continent were clearly observable to the ear as stations from different regions appeared and then disappeared (or vice versa). The daily, seasonal, and year-to-year changes in propagation from solar and atmospheric effects are the biggest reason I continue to enjoy ham radio with public service communications as the hams are providing in South Texas a close second.