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Merged Solar Eclipse 2017!

Argumemnon said:
Well it's not more dangerous to look at during the eclipse. You just have to remember to not look at the sun longer than you normally would... so like a second or two.
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Actually, there's some debate about that. The counter-theory is (IIRC) that because the total amount of light is lower, your pupils dilate to let in more. However, the bright spots are still as bright, so there's a higher risk of spot-blindness.

Dunno if that's true or not, but thought I'd share.
 
Argumemnon said:
Well it's not more dangerous to look at during the eclipse. You just have to remember to not look at the sun longer than you normally would... so like a second or two.
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Then point of my post was these people did not have any intention of watching the Eclipse or in fact any interest n it whatsoever .. just the news reports made them think that because of the eclipse they needed special glasses just to go out doors.
 
Hellbound said:
Actually, there's some debate about that. The counter-theory is (IIRC) that because the total amount of light is lower, your pupils dilate to let in more. However, the bright spots are still as bright, so there's a higher risk of spot-blindness.

Dunno if that's true or not, but thought I'd share.
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I wouldn't be surprised if it were true and accept the correction.
 
At the last minute they canceled school for my youngest, so he was home for the eclipse. He and I went down to the big park by the river where they were have the local viewing event, including the elusive glasses for the first 800. So he and I stood in line for an hour, which passed quickly as an old friend was just ahead of us, so we caught up with each other while the boy enjoyed a hot dog, chips, and cold water. We got our glasses and went back home to watch it from the comfort of our backyard with mommy. As expected, the local station played Dark Side of the Moon, in it's entirety, during the eclipse! Mother Nature was kind enough to hold back the clouds and the rain until 15 to 20 minutes after the main event, then it clouded up quickly, followed by a short, gutter washing downpour, which was followed by sunny skies again. With my glasses, I can still see a small bite out of the sun right now. Very cool.
 
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Totality was amazing. No clouds in my area in Columbia. Totally loved it!! I could hear the monkeys at the zoo until totality and then dead silence when the total eclipse happened.
 
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I went to the park to check it out. It was about 97% covered here (Atlanta), so it wasn't that mind-blowing. The shadows and violet-tint to the light were kinda cool though. I expected it to cool off more.

I was able to make a few people's days though, I had four extra pairs of eclipse glasses. I thought about trying to sell them (just to get back my own money), but it just didn't seem right. People just wanna see stuff.
 
It was awesome! My husband got some great pics. On my FB page. Salem was hoppin' last night. Today there were cars parked quite ways up our street cuz there's some empty land across the larger roads. We could hear them cheering and lots of music when it went eclipse dark. Fun! As it was coming up to the event, everything was lightly tinted blue.
 
Most amazing thing I've ever seen. So bizarre.
Shadows are sharper. Strange muted colors, but the totality? Even just the minute or so was worth it. I'm officially an eclipse snob. Partial eclipses.... pfft.
 
I had an "interesting" time here in Chicago.

The conditions where I was were "questionable" to say the least. There was still some major uncertainty on whether the eclipse would be visible due to the cloud cover. However, there appeared to be breaks in the clouds at around 11:00 am, so I loaded up my bike & trailer, and headed over to Lincoln Park.

There were a number of people already in the park with their eclipse glasses when I arrived, and more showed up as the time passed. Unfortunately, the cloud deck started to thicken, and at around 80% blockage mark, the sun disappeared behind the clouds, and did not re-emerge until about 10 minutes after maximum eclipse (which was between 86% and 87% at my location.) :(

I was able to make the following observations, though:

1. There was a noticeable darkening of the sky at maximum eclipse, though due to conditions, it was hard to tell how much was due to the cloud cover, and how much to +86% of the sun being blocked by the moon.:confused: However, over at the Chicago Tribune web site, they do have a time lapse video of the changing conditions during the eclipse from North Avenue Beach.

2. There was also a significant drop in the air temperature at maximum eclipse, which was notice by several people around me.:cool:

3. Most surprising were the winds. Before and during the early phases of the eclipse, the air was barely moving; a flag on a nearby building hanged limply in what little wind there was.

At maximum eclipse, however, a breeze developed that came from the south (the direction of the total eclipse.) As time passed the wind gradually shifted from south to east, seeming in time with the passage of the eclipse.:boggled:

By 2:00 pm, and when < 50% of the sun was covered by the moon, the breeze had "died down," and conditions had returned to what they before the eclipse stated.

Well, on to 2024...:)
 
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I saw it.

I prepared in advance by getting some eclipse glasses some weeks before, but then I saw warnings about how some of them were fakes. I decided that they might still be useful -- if one does not look too long through them. Just like with looking at the Sun in general -- it makes afterimages. I also punched holes in some paper plates so I could use them as pinhole cameras.

Earlier today, I put the glasses, some books, some paper, my digital camera, my cellphone, and some other stuff into a bag and took a folding chair with me to my house's front yard.

The sky was clear, with only a few wispy clouds near the horizon, and the time was 9:10 am PDT. I was just in time to see the entering partial phase begin. I used the eclipse glasses, careful to look only briefly, but the Sun through them was dark orange. It looked like it had a small bite out of it at 1 o'clock.

I watched for about an hour as the entering phase continued, and the bit expanded and became noticeably circular.

By 10 am, it was still noticeably daylight, but not as bright, and the Sun looked like a crescent. Both with my eclipse glasses and with my paper-plate pinhole camera. The leaves of a nearby tree also made a nice pinhole-camera effect. The paper-plate pinhole image was not as relatively faint as it had early been, and I could easily see my cellphone's display when I shade it. Earlier, shading it could make it only borderline visible.

I very briefly looked at the Sun around then, and while it was still bright, it did not make an afterimage.

By 10:14 am, my surroundings were noticeably dark, even with a daylight pattern of illumination, and the Sun was now a sliver at 7 o'clock.

I decided that it was safe to look at the Sun, and it looks like a bright spot on a ring -- the diamond-ring effect. When the "diamond" faded, then at 10:17 am, ...

TOTALITY. The Sun looked like a black disk with a thick white ring around it. The disk being the Moon and the ring being the corona. The sky looked as dark as dark twilight, even if not as dark as late night.

It lasted for a few minutes, and I got some pictures of it. Then I saw the diamond-ring effect again, and I knew that it was no longer safe to look directly at the Sun.

I stuck around for the remainder of the eclipse, the exiting partial phase, watching it as it happened. The Sun appeared on the opposite side of the Moon, at 1 o'clock, and as the eclipse ended at around 11:30 am, the Moon was at 7 o'clock. I then returned to my house with my bag and folding chair.
 
I'm in Lebanon, OR, about 69 mi directly south.

Some pictures of totality:
Total%20Eclipse%20of%20the%20Sun%20--%202017-08-21%2010.18.52.jpg

Total%20Eclipse%20of%20the%20Sun%20--%202017-08-21%2010.19.16.jpg
 
I saw it from the Snake River in Idaho, just north of Idaho Falls. Absolutely breathtaking.

I spent almost the entirety of totality screwing around with a cheap camera and piece of welding glass but it was worth it.
 

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I'm still fighting back tears. (And that's not just because I took off the glasses at 30% before averting my gaze...)

Traveled several hours to the center of totality -- an astronomer's event in St. Joseph, Missouri. At the airport, thousands of people, food truck, media -- I never heard or found the scientific speakers.

Clouds rolled in during partial and we had a little rain and slate gray but dark skies in totality. During the 4+ hours of the eclipse we had glimpses of 5-10 seconds at most as the clouds rolled by. Still, the family next to me thought that was so cool and cheered at the little bite taken out of the sun. I'd heard the kids asking a lot of questions which the parents didn't know so I eventually chimed in with the answers.

It wasn't raining during totality but we could not see the sun (or corona) at all. Still, it got very dark and spooky. Unfortunately I spent half the couple minutes yelling at and then trodding over to tell some guy to TURN HIS HEADLIGHTS OFF. I think this was the same guy who walked around earlier proudly showing off his 2-million-watt lamp (or whatever it was) claiming he was going to turn it on during totality and light up the moon. (!) I told him right away that um, we're expecting it to be dark for this event, and to keep it off. He said, oh, it's going to be pointing straight up anyway.

Watched the rest, and then saw the skies clear up for the next several hours (after it was completely done.) I thought, well, I fulfilled the barest minimum of seeing a sliver of the sun taken out - but I could have done that at home! I've seen dark skies before so the only unique thing there was the suddenness of it. I didn't bother with trying to get pictures and it was too hazy even to get the pegboard projection to work during the entire thing, except for about 1 minute.

Bucket list item, unfulfilled. Sort of, but not really.
 
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Perfect view of totality in Nashville. No clouds in the way the entire 2 minutes and 13 seconds. Then as soon as (and I mean as soon as) totality was over, a cloud covered everything. Praise the cloud gods, sun god, moon god , or whatever other fictional god.
 
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I went to Stayton Oregon with my wife and mom. I had a Nikon D3400 with a 600mm lens and a Sony Handycam CX160 both with solar filters on tripods. Fiddling with the tripod adjustment every few minutes to keep the sun in frame was a pain, but it didn't interfere with watching the eclipse. My primitive photos and video don't do the scene we experienced any justice at all.

Right after totality when I had to look away and reattach the solar filters to the camera, the park got much brighter very quickly. I did a quick pan of the park with the camcorder to show how dark it got, but within thirty seconds past totality it was no longer dark and the moment was gone.

I almost settled for a 93% eclipse in the Bremerton area where I live but my wife kept an eye on the traffic cams which showed very little traffic on I-5. We were told to expect a very long commute if we didn't go the day before. Instead we left at midnight and got there in 3.5 hours driving the speed limit the entire way. Then we tried to sleep in the truck for several hours prior to the 0908 eclipse start.

The party atmosphere at Santiam Station Park was very nice; not too many people, free coffee and snacks. There were other people present with basic camera and camcorders to record the event. One guy had solar film on his binoculars; I wish I had thought of that. It made for far better viewing of the eclipse than just using glasses.

The return trip was about eight hours in much stop and go traffic. The 2014 eclipse will pass over my daughter's house in Texas; we'll be visiting her then. :)

A few minutes of my video and photos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX9F1zr3W0M



ETA; I did a poor job of spell checking my captions. :)
 
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WOW! That was incredible. Just spectacular! I thought it would be interesting and cool to see, but I didn’t expect it to be so dramatic and sensational and emotional.

Of course I have seen pictures and videos of an eclipse before. But when I first saw totality my thought was, “So THAT’S what an eclipse looks like?” It was very much unexpected. I’m not sure what was so different from the pictures, but it was very different. The moon was so black. The corona was not just white rays, but rays of light. The light was strange and eerie. It felt like being in a dome with a weird hole in the top.

It did not get as dark as I expected. It was like just after sundown. Except, of course, different. With a sunset the light is directional, coming from where the sun is setting. Here, the light was coming from overhead. The light was very strange. Someone I was with said when they first took off their glasses during totality they thought the whole world had gone black and white. The colors were very muted.

Form all the pictures I expected the sky around the sun/moon to be very dark, even black. It wasn’t it was blue. A light pale muted blue. All along the horizon it was a pale yellow with a tinge of pink.

I didn’t notice anything strange about the animals because there weren’t really animals where we were. As it got near to the time for totality, we hiked down from the petroglyph site to the side of a hill in order to get away from the crowd and into nature where there was a beautiful view overlooking a huge valley of trees. It was all rocks and grass and weeds and wild flowers. No trees, so not really any birds (or shade. It was so hot!)

I now understand why people say even 99% is nothing like totality. I now understand why people say experiencing a total eclipse is spiritual or even life changing. Before today I thought that was hype and exaggeration. I don’t think that any more. Despite all my learning and preparation, the eclipse was very different than I expected (although I’m not sure I can explain it exactly) and was surprisingly awe inspiring. Everybody talks about the diamond ring, and that was truly one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, but I will never forget the first time I saw that black disc in the sky.
 
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