How was your eclipse day?

Luckily, I didn't have to travel anywhere to see the total eclipse. Karen and I were at the cabin where we could experience the event without distractions. We had four minutes and eleven seconds of totality. It was amazing and awe inspiring. As a former amateur astronomer, it was amazing to ponder all of the alignments that are necessary for such an event to take place. As a trained biologist, I was as interested with other animal's reaction to the eclipse, and therefore, glad to be in a natural setting. The crickets sure were confused for quite a while after the sun came back out.

The temperature drop was interesting as was the amount of light available even with a sliver of the sun showing. All in all, we had a great day.
Mike
 
Center line was right over my house. So were the clouds.
Not a cloud in the sky on Monday and beautiful day today Wed.
Darn, so disappointing... yeah it went dark and cooler, but big deal.
I'm happy that lots of people got to see the whole thing.
Videos and photos were amazing.

You beat me George.
 
I knew what to expect but wow, pretty amazing to be in the 100% totality area.. we had some clouds but they were light and broken for the most part and could observe the eclipse from beginning to end... the Corona at the totality mark was just amazing...
 
We weren't in the totality zone, more like 98%..just a tiny sliver remained, but it was still pretty cool. Watched it with my wife, son, his wife, 3 of our grandkids and my sons wife's parents. Party lol.

Temp dropped and it got dusky out, but not night time dark.

Was still pretty amazing. I'll be 152 years old when the next one comes through this way, so I'm not planning on seeing it lol
 
We hit about 86% here in Southern MD. Disappointed in myself for not doing the 7 hour drive to the closest totality, but still neat if a bit underwhelming. Clouds were starting to get in the way just at maximum adding to the frustration. But I got the "money shot" for my location. 1000010194.jpg.
 
Most Excellent with family. Our second one in totality. Traveled to Arkansas to view and then sit in hours of traffic....lol...wasn't really funny.
 
We were to see about roughly 88% but had grey solid overcast. I saw a fuzzy, indistinct pale yellow light source that barely reminded me of the sun.
We're calling it the Great 2024 SELD.**
But we saw the last one in the 80s where it was 100% in Atlanta. and I was prepared, and I got some really good photos (film) that have long ago been lost during one of my many moves since then.

** Solar Eclipse Let Down
 
Dayton was in the totallity zone...my backyard.. didnt need to go anywhere.... but went to a local park that was usually empty for a Monday, but whoa, was full of people to watch...
It was fairly cloudless.....At the totallity moments..... everybody let out a "yay!"... some people lit off fireworks....
Crazy being dark in the daytime for a few minutes... it was big fun.
 
We only had about 80% I made one of those pin hole viewers with an Amazon box and could see it VERY clearly through that. Was a strange light that was outside during the event and inside was like a super cloudy day even though there were NO clouds in the sky anywhere to be seen. We just stepped out on the back deck to look.
 
We were in Danville IN, about 20 miles due west of Indianapolis, right at the (current) edge of suburban sprawl in that direction. I have a cousin there, so we arrived Saturday and spent a long weekend; we got home yesterday evening. TOTALLY worth the 1,200 mile round trip drive. Thanks to our extended stay at my cousin's we didn't hit any traffic that I could ascribe specifically to the eclipse.

Just west of town is active farmland. Their son lives down a long private road with farm field on either side, affording us a great place to set up and enjoy the event with just three other people nearby (but not with us- they maintained a respectful and courteous 200 yard distance between themselves and us.)

There was a hint of cloud in the sky but nothing like enough to really impede our ability to see the spectacle. It did, however, slightly affect the sharpness of my photos. Here's our field of view:
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My cousin and her husband were really into it. We had a great time.
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After much internal debate I had elected not to purchase a solar filter, so I only shot pictures during the three and a half minutes of totality.

The camera's autofocus sometimes struggled to figure out what it was supposed to be doing:
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But eventually it got it right.
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As the moon began to move past the sun, we could see reddish areas (right and bottom) that we think relate to the moon's topography. Large valleys let the sun shine through just a fraction earlier than when the moon's horizon began to clear the disc of the sun.
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Finally, as we began to emerge into daylight, I caught the lingering traces of twilight. It was spectacular, in an eerie sort of way.
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I can't believe nobody has posted these lyrics yet...

Pink Floyd, "Eclipse" from Dark Side of the Moon

All that you touch
And all that you see
All that you taste
All you feel
[...]
And all that is now
And all that is gone
And all that's to come
And everything under the sun is in tune (Everything)
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon
 
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I was working in my yard, and grabbed the eclipse glasses at various points in the event.
We hit 93% here, and the light was muted but still daylight-ish
I was kind of surprised to not see others outside looking up.

Seeing the news coverage of the traffic in upstate VT and NH, I was glad to have stayed home.
 
When we decided to go a couple of weeks ago I drew a straight line from home to the path of totality. When I focused on the area of SE Missouri that the line intersected I saw the town of Corning AR some 40 miles to the west. My dad was born there in 1915 but I had never visited Corning so the destination was chosen. Corning has a population of about 3300 and lodging there was unavailable. We stayed the night before in Jackson, TN and drove about 125 miles to Corning early Eclipse Day in order to (hopefully) avoid hoards of people crossing the Mississippi River on I-155. As it turns out there were no hoards of people at 8ish in the morning. Traffic was sparse as we rolled across Big River. More concerning was an overcast layer of cloud and within a few miles of the Mississippi was a thick, heavy fog bank. A few miles west we drove out of the fog and the visible sky was obscured by a high thin layer. As we drove into Corning we saw a sign for a watch party at the Walmart parking lot. We set up there around 10 AM with approximately 15 other cars & trucks in the empty lot. This store was closed and moved to another town some time ago. Soon it was apparent that three vehicles were tourists like us, ( Brenda and I from Florida and a family from Michigan in two vehicles) the others were locals setting up food and souvenir booths and an audio tent. The scale in Corning was small, but they were preparing for the about 1,000 people they thought might show up in their small town.

I set up my image projector as shown in this thread https://www.st-owners.com/forums/th...best-binoculars-to-view-solar-eclipse.186367/ and we set to wait. The high cloud layer dissipated and were excited to see the lot filling up. Eventually the lot was fairly full and at about 12:37 the audio tent went live with a 2 hour play list that was composed of songs with sun, moon, stars in the lyrics. Yes, The Dark Side Of The Moon was on it as was Richie Havens Here Comes The Sun..... Havens prominently at 2:00 PM when the corona collapsed and the sun began to come visible again. A carnival atmosphere prevailed. The best part for me were kids around us that were still kids ( what happens to humans at age 12?) that were interested in seeing the eclipse image change over time on a simple piece of cardboard. They all wanted to see the image on the palm of their hand after I showed them. Hopefully a few made a life long memory.

About 30 minutes after totality I noticed people packing up and within an hour or so the lot was an abandoned Walmart again. The trip back across the Mississippi did have a moderate amount of traffic but really not much. As we approached I-40 on the TN side there were a lot of vehicles funneling in from roads coming from IL & KY to the north but we got back to the hotel with minimal delay.

As during the 2017 eclipse I was blessed to see with Vinny and Shuey I was struck by the enormity of the heavens and What could possibly hang the heavens so precisely. It's so big and I'm so small.....yet we are known to the most precise detail.


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7 minutes in.

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Obligatory tee shirt shot.

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Plus 25 minutes.

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Plus 39 minutes.

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3 minutes 54 seconds of totality in Corning. A few swifts or martins that feed on flying insects were flitting around in the twilight looking for dinner. Lots of ohhhs and aahhs.

Sing it Richie.

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About three seconds into the 2017 eclipse I began plotting, "where are we going for 2024?"

Virtually my entire family was in the path of totality (PoT) in upstate New York, but I immediately searched for historic cloud cover for April 8th - which from half a lifetime of living there told me would not be good. I have enough friends and former coworkers in Texas that Dallas or Austin were our obvious choices.

Then our close friends that live in Rochester decided they were going to join us in Texas too and made reservations at a small rustic resort in Palestine which they branded the Deadhead Ranch, as the husband and his professional chef wife as are lifelong fans of the Grateful Dead, as are we. Except Palestine was not in totality.

As the weather for the coming week began to take shape, Rochester was expected to be clear and all of central Texas was expected overcast the day of the show.

I briefly contemplated changing destinations but we were committed to our friends, and whatever Texas had to offer we'd experience it together.

I suggested Corsicana as a place to view the eclipse. The school district was hosting viewing in their stadium parking lot and it not far from the center line of the PoT. There was some grumbling by the adult children about driving over an hour "to see something we could see just as well at the ranch". (Uh, NO!)

The whole drive there was overcast with just a few flashes of blue sky. We arrived and found a spot in massive parking lots which were barely occupied. The expected crowds of locals didn't materialize likely due to the forecast and current conditions. But we befriended some other intrepid Totality chasers from Virgina and Boston and had a great time socializing with them.

Two different cloud layers stymied attempts to predict what the conditions might be during totality. My attempts to document C1 to C2 (the partial period before totality) were hit or miss. Nothing as good as 2017 in Oregon. And as late as 45 minutes before C2 (beginning of totality) the sun was totally obscured. Then each of those layers went their separate ways and the clouds parted leaving a nearly cloudless sky in the direction of the sun, as you could see in my earlier post.

Once totality arrived my insistence was vindicated as my friends drank in the experience. "We get it now!"

We returned to the ranch and shared our experience with our hosts. I asked, "did you get into totality?" "Yeah, we saw it (totality)." "Oh, where'd you go?" "We saw it from here." No you didn't, I thought but kept to myself.

Anyway, we're already plotting 2026 in Spain. :cool:
 
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