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Merged Solar Eclipse 2017!

I gave away about 30 pairs of eclipse glasses yesterday morning then turned on the TV to find out that people were paying $20 a pair for them. Oh, well.

We had a terrible thunderstorm here near Orlando. High winds, lightning, tons of rain. Then it stopped. And then clouds faded away. Then the eclipse started. I can only imagine how awesome totality was. But, the partial eclipse here was still pretty darn cool. I don't know if it was just a coincidence, but the wind stopped during the eclipse. That and the muted light made for an eerie sensation. It didn't appear to get very dark to the naked eye, but I noticed that photos I took were blurrier and darker. I wasn't able to feel the temperature drop, though news reports say it fell by a couple of degrees. Two degrees lower than "too hot to be standing outside" is still too hot to be standing outside. One thing that was quite noticable was the increasing feeling of heat on my face as the eclipse wrapped up.
 
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CORed said:
Totality was like twilight, with a planet near the sun (Venus?)and a few of the brightest stars visible and the black circle of the moon surrounded by the corona was incredible.I saw the "diamond ring" at both start and end of totality.
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I'll bet you the planet you saw was Venus.

Mars and Mercury were supposedly nearer to the sun but I was unable to locate them. I really wanted to see Mercury most of all. From my location, I think it was covered by some very wispy clouds. Mars, on the other hand, well, I still don't know why I couldn't find Mars. There weren't as many wispy clouds on the Mars side of the sun as there were on the Mercury side. I looked and looked but couldn't find it.

Venus, however, put on quite the show! Big and bright and unmistakably Venus. And Jupiter! Way down on the opposite end from Venus sitting above the horizon, Jupiter was lovely and bright.

I tried to locate some of the brighter stars and may have briefly noticed Sirius, but by this time I was completely out-of-my-mind-crazy with lunacy.
 
Trebuchet said:
...hundreds of Vaux's Swifts flying down the chimney of the vacant house across the street. Which was pretty much equally cool to the 99%.
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That is cool!

The change in lighting, cooling and a breeze were great near totality. It's not that part which switches. It got a tiny bit darker so you got that whole part of the experience.


It was the change in the Sun/Moon at totality where the switch was thrown. Amazing how totality switched on and off in that fraction of a second. It was like a whole different object was up there in the sky.
 
C_Felix said:
My car didn't die.

However...from Raleigh NC to Columbia SC is about 220 miles.

The wife, the son and I drove down in about 3 hours, about an average of 70 miles per hour.

7 hours to get back!

7.

I know you can do the math, but that is an average of about 30 miles per hour.

That sucked.

But hey...totality was worth it.
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:rolleyes: Luxury.

Home was 274 miles away from Casper. I left Casper yesterday at about 4 p.m. and walked in my front door this morning at 4:45 a.m.

There were a couple of glitches along the way. Much like Skeptic Ginger's story, my niece's Jeep broke down after travelling only twenty miles out from Casper. One of my sisters and her husband were travelling with her. I was lucky to have noticed them on the side of the road. I took sister with me and left brother-in-law and niece to wait for a tow truck to take them to Douglas a few miles down the road. Niece's fiancé had a trailer big enough to haul the Jeep. He was contacted and, bless his heart, drove from Sterling, Colorado to Douglas and back. About four or five hours after contacting him, my sister and I saw him tooling up the other side of the highway doing about 80 mph as we sat there in traffic barely going 10 mph. There were times I thought I might never make it home.
 
Dumb All Over said:
:rolleyes: Luxury.

Home was 274 miles away from Casper. I left Casper yesterday at about 4 p.m. and walked in my front door this morning at 4:45 a.m.

There were a couple of glitches along the way. Much like Skeptic Ginger's story, my niece's Jeep broke down after travelling only twenty miles out from Casper. One of my sisters and her husband were travelling with her. I was lucky to have noticed them on the side of the road. I took sister with me and left brother-in-law and niece to wait for a tow truck to take them to Douglas a few miles down the road. Niece's fiancé had a trailer big enough to haul the Jeep. He was contacted and, bless his heart, drove from Sterling, Colorado to Douglas and back. About four or five hours after contacting him, my sister and I saw him tooling up the other side of the highway doing about 80 mph as we sat there in traffic barely going 10 mph. There were times I thought I might never make it home.
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:hug4

I think this qualifies us as soul mates. :p
 
Dumb All Over said:
I'll bet you the planet you saw was Venus.

Mars and Mercury were supposedly nearer to the sun but I was unable to locate them. I really wanted to see Mercury most of all. From my location, I think it was covered by some very wispy clouds. Mars, on the other hand, well, I still don't know why I couldn't find Mars. There weren't as many wispy clouds on the Mars side of the sun as there were on the Mercury side. I looked and looked but couldn't find it.

Venus, however, put on quite the show! Big and bright and unmistakably Venus. And Jupiter! Way down on the opposite end from Venus sitting above the horizon, Jupiter was lovely and bright.

I tried to locate some of the brighter stars and may have briefly noticed Sirius, but by this time I was completely out-of-my-mind-crazy with lunacy.
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During totality we only saw one “star”. I said it was probably Venus, but I wasn’t sure. Looking at maps, Venus doesn’t fit the position. The “star” we saw was to the lower right of the sun/moon. The maps I’ve seen suggest that it was Sirius. But they also suggest that Sirius would be less bright than Venus. So I’m still not sure what we saw. It was pretty far away from the sun/moon toward the lower left about a 45 degree angle. I think. I was a bit stunned and slack-jawed, so I can’t guarantee my memories are precise.

What did we see?
 
I see very few stories about being clouded out for totality. Did I (and the several thousand other people at this venue) choose the one little area across the totality path that wasn't able to see it?
 
Monday was one of the most enjoyable, memorable days of my life. I'm not easily impressed and very seldom awestruck.....but the eclipse did it.

We departed a tiny local airport (2GC) with 6 planes, all piloted by post-solo students with an instructor in the right seat and as many passengers as the plane could safely carry. I think we wound up with 20 people total.

The 80 minute flight to Triple Tree was perfect. We flew n a tighter formation than I originally though we should have with students doing the flying, but it turned out fine and for most of them it was the first time being within a few hundred feet of another airborne plane.

The arrival to TT was busy........10 planes a minute landing on their one 7000'x400' grass strip. When we arrived, it appeared that there were already more than a hpisand planes on the ground and many more arrived over the next several hours.

TT also has more than a thousand camper spaces and hundreds of tent spot and all these seemed to be full.

They had good food spearhead all around the facility, and the crowd conducted itself better as a group than any similarly sized crowd I've ever experienced.

I'm sure that the eclipse experience was the same for me as for everyone else that got a perfect weather day for a total eclipse. I have in the past so anticipated such an event that the actual occupancy underwhelmed. I don't think that possible for this one. If anything, it exceeded my expectations..

The departure was a mad dash.......couple thousand planes all wanting to leave at about the same time, however I saw not one unsafe action. Amazing, really.

All in all, one of the better days of my life.
 
I had a good time with my partial experience, but reading these posts has me excited for the totality coming our way in 2024. Thanks all for sharing.

And I'd like to end this post with a short prayer for SG's clutch. May your years of service be remembered along side your smokey demise in search of celestial wonder.
 
DevilsAdvocate said:
What did we see?
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You saw the Mothership, launched from planet Nibiru. That explains why we didn't see you at lunch. The rest of us were beamed up. We were served peanut butter and oobleck jelly sandwiches by the very hospitable Nibiruians who then showed us their collection of recently-deceased, reanimated human specimens. The latest addition was Jerry Lewis. He was doing his "Hey, Laaaady!" routine. So annoying.

If it wasn't the Mothership, I'm guessing Sirius. The ecliptic plane roughly lined up from lower left to upper right. What you saw was not in that plane and therefore could not have been a planet. Did the object you saw make a noise? Did it bark like a dog? If it barked like a dog then, without question, it was Sirius. On the other hand, if it quacked like a duck, it was probably just a duck.
 
Senor_Pointy said:
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 was at North Menan Butte where I could see all the way past the edge of totality almost 360 degrees all the way around. First off, I'll agree with the other posters here. Totality or bust. It is absolutely shocking how bright the sun is. Even a tiny fraction of it can make it still seem like a somewhat normal day. Second, if you are going to see a total eclipse, get up high. I was super skeptical that any change would be rapid enough to be visible, I was very wrong. Seeing those changes in light race past was just as amazing as seeing everything associated with totality. The event was made even more astounding by the haze from wildfires. Normally, the sun shining into the haze is like headlights into fog, the brightness blocks the view of everything beyond. But the sweep of totality suddenly revealed things in an orange light that were seconds before and after not visible.

Oh, and it took me 9 hours to get back to my SLC hotel. Totally worth it though.

ETA: Totality approach video

Full length, same location:
 
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Dr. Keith said:
I had a good time with my partial experience, but reading these posts has me excited for the totality coming our way in 2024. Thanks all for sharing.

And I'd like to end this post with a short prayer for SG's clutch. May your years of service be remembered along side your smokey demise in search of celestial wonder.
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:D :thumbsup:

Will take donations in lieu of prayers. :p
 
Shepard Smith and Megan Kelly show their scientific ignorance:

Some anchors throw shade at eclipse
Megyn Kelly of NBC’s “Today” broached her skepticism of eclipse mania with her fellow panelists, asking, “Is the problem that the eclipse is not actually that exciting and we need to gin it up? I don’t know, I’m not sure.”
Later she advised viewers not to fret if they miss the astronomical event.
“You can see it on the Weather Channel. They’ll, like, tee it up, the ‘Today’ show is going to tee it up for everybody tomorrow. If you miss it today, you’ll see the perfect little thing — you don’t have to waste an hour of your day.”...

He [Smith] was also concerned eclipse chasers might not have known what they were in for, later asking a correspondent in the field, “They know this is all it’s going to be, right? Just a moon over a sun?”
When the partial solar eclipse cast its shadow over New York City, Smith offered an incisive analysis of the changing light: “So here, it’s a little darker than usual, but it’s not, like, dark.”
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Skeptic Ginger said:
Shepard Smith and Megan Kelly show their scientific ignorance:

Some anchors throw shade at eclipse
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eclipse_review.png
 
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