August 21st, 2017 eclipse in the US

ps200306

Utterly perfect experience in east Tennessee. Practically cloudless all day since sunrise. Mind blown by the eclipse experience. Just popped into McDonalds for a pit stop. Has taken 2 hrs to drive the first 30 miles from eclipse site ... and I couldn't care less

RobertKK

It was perfect in the Jackson Hole area in the Grand Tetons.
I think this could become addictive...

indeq

Make the most of them guys, in 563 million years their will be no more eclipses.


http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a27824/when-is-last-total-solar-eclipse/

Hector Savage

RobertKK wrote: »

It was perfect in the Jackson Hole area in the Grand Tetons.
I think this could become addictive...

David Eicher from Astronomy mag was there, looked good .. perfect clear skies!

jfSDAS

Hi all,

Great to hear all the reports from the Irish contingent scattered across the U.S. Sorry to learn Nashville was clouded out. Hopefully it has whetted the appetite to keep eclipse chasing though.

I had been chatting to some of the Cork group before leaving Ireland and Salem was their Plan B with Madras the first choice. Possibly the change of plan was due to traffic but also we had a little high cloud in Madras after sunrise which then cleared. There were fires within the general area too but that didn't affect our location.

The stunning prominences and corona were the stand-out highlights for me along with the pinkish chromosphere towards the end of totality. The horizon colours were a little more subdued than I've seen before and the diamond ring not as spectacular. Not that I'm moaning about totality but more comparing this with previous ones to show each is unique and why we keep chasing them!

There was a great build-up and I hung out with the Santa Cruz club as one of their members and his family were camped next to me. I also brought along my 10-year old nephew who lives in San Francisco as I really wanted to share it with family. Jack's sister couldn't make it unfortunately as she had volleyball practice for her new High School.

Madras really rolled out the red carpet for attendees with a big Festival at the site where we were pitched. Lots of families attending with concerts, buskers, local craft vendors, and much more going on all day. NASA ran talks about the eclipse and you could pick up pretty good merchandise at various stalls including the official Solarfest one. The whole town was very welcoming of visitors and there was no hiking of prices (except for last minute sleeping of course) - that said, I did spot one guy chancing his arm selling eclipse glasses outside Solarfest for $20 - elsewhere in town and at Solarfest they were only $2.

Jack loved the whole experience of wandering around meeting people. He hung out a bit with one of the bands playing on stage. Tom and Dee from Dublin (who you might have seen on Sky News) took him geocaching, and he just generally chatted with anyone he met - though I nearly throttled him when Sky News caught up with me and he said "Oh God" off-camera and rolled his eyes when I mentioned the wonder of eclipses! It was because he had heard me talking earlier to Central Oregon TV about historic eclipses and he thought I was rambling too much about "the Mayans" (his words)!

Speaking of TV, it was the Irish flag we were all flying which grabbed the station teams attention. Tom and Dee were first off the mark with a lengthy Sky News interview, with an Oregon channel next and then French TV. Our tent was almost directly across from the Fox set-up which is why they nabbed us. The running joke amongst the Irish there at one stage was that we would end up ringing the Joe Duffy show to complain about being hounded by TV crews!

I met a couple others from Ireland along for the eclipse too and a great addition to the Solartown site was a large world map which people could stick a pin in to say where they were from. I noticed N Korea even had two pins!

Traffic, the real worry for everyone travelling, proved not to be any issue getting from Portland to Madras last Saturday morning. I left about 30 minutes after totality ended and it took 2 hours clear town. Rather than return to Portland directly I took a long loop on Hwy 97 NE towards the Columbia River and then paralleled it on the I.84 back to the city. It doubled the driving distance but probably saved time. Still, it took six hours on the return journey versus two on the outbound.

All in all, a great eclipse and experience. Lots of other memories too, including the sliver of the crescent Moon at 5:15am on Sunday morning just over 24 hours from its date with the Sun.

John

mickmackey1

Fab report John, Madras certainly turned out to be a wise choice. On NASA Tv they showed a sat image which had most of the path under clear skies, except Missouri and the south-east, but reports on the ground paint a somewhat cloudier picture. One thing I'd like to know relates to the visibility of Venus and Jupiter, or whether anyone saw Regulus 2° from the Sun. Thanks.

indeq

http://digg.com/2017/best-solar-eclipse-videos-photos

jfSDAS

I spotted Venus s couple of minutes before totality but not sooner. There was thin cloud which prevented me picking it up earlier - have seen it 15 mins prior to totality before. Didn't spot Regulus and probably should have looked more. I was playing around with the camera little during those brief 2 mins (just wide angle with the Canon kit lens on a 700D).

eclipsechaser

Drove from Lincoln, Nebraska to Casper, Wyoming - over 2,000km in 2 days - in order to avoid the clouds. Certainly worth the effort as this was a beautiful, beautiful eclipse. I was with a lot of family and friends. This was my 11th but several family members were seeing their first. I think they finally understand now!

Here's my first photo of the corona:

mickmackey1

Was comparing your image to one on stargazers lounge and the detail in the corona seems identical!! And yet I think his was taken from Oregon and yours from Wyoming... pretty amazing -

eclipsechaser

I slept for a long, long time. Just looking at some photos now. Got a nice one with a hint of Baily's beads and prominences.

M.T. Cranium

I posted my observations over on the weather forum where there is an eclipse thread also.

My choices were Baker City OR and Rexburg ID, went on holiday the week before (from my home base in Vancouver, BC, Canada) and planned an overnight motel at Green River UT for night before pre-eclipse night. The decision was pretty easy to make as all possible locations from WY to OR would be mainly clear according to 24h guidance, so to minimize the drive home we set off for Baker City OR and camped in the mountains which were full of clusters of eclipse chasers camped every place possible.

Went into the town in the morning and decided to stay there for the eclipse. Perfectly clear skies and quickly warming from our chilly overnight low in the mountains. You can read the details of the temperature trends in my weather forum report, but basically the temperature went down from about 27 C at 0930h PDT to 13 C at 1025 just after totality, then rebounded and shot up to the mid-30s by afternoon.

I saw basically the same images as you've posted above, although to my naked eye the equatorial plane coronal streamers were longer and more delicate. The upward pointing streamer was aimed at Venus which in my viewing spot was almost overhead at totality.

This was my second total eclipse in clear skies (first was 7 March 1970 at Virginia Beach, VA) and I've also had one clouded darkness experience (late May 1984) as well as a 95% partial in Ontario around 1994.

Having seen the earlier eclipse in 1970 I had something of a clue what was about to happen and kept telling my wife, this will be great. And it was. Crowd reactions were similar to 1970 except that back then, nobody had distracting devices so maybe a bit more unrestrained then. People clap and I guess it must be God who is getting the applause unless the Moon is a sentient being which seems unlikely to me.

ps200306

Weather was pretty much perfect in Niota, Tennessee. I was up from sunrise, and there was only the slightest haze which burned off before 9am. Actually, a few isolated cumulus appeared from nowhere just after first contact, and one sat obstinately in front of the sun for ten minutes, but then the sky went back to cloudless blue just as quickly.

For a "city" of population 700, Niota laid on a good show. The local gospel choir sang, and there was an air-conditioned prefab with computers showing live streams of the eclipse from other locations -- I spent a while looking at Madras and Carbondale. I also spent some time making my eclipse glasses and camera filter out of a Shredded Wheat box and some Baader astrosolar film. Both were very effective, though I made a mess of the photography in other ways.

Around the time of totality I started going through a pre-planned checklist of things to observe. I noticed shadows on the ground getting very sharp due to the reduced extent of the Sun. Bird noises were replaced by chirping cicadas and the temperature dropped significantly. The sky went deep violet and the haze on the horizon went ice-pop orange. I could see Jupiter and Venus very easily but, as I expected, no sign of Mars or Mercury. I also looked out for Regulus but didn't see it.

The solar corona was very vivid but I didn't notice the pink chromosphere and probably forgot to look for it. We had 2:40 of totality at Niota and there was a very vivid diamond ring effect at the end of it. I watched Venus for at least five minutes after the end of totality. However, I have watched Venus in full daylight for 45 minutes after sunrise previously, so this was no surprise. I'm pretty sure you can watch Venus all day if you know exactly where to look.

So that was it. I think I may have caught the bug, as I am wondering where and when I will see my next one.

SonOfPerdition

Just back from the US late last week and I'm still digesting the experience.
We saw the eclipse standing on a hill in the Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho. We stayed away from all the official viewing points to avoid the crowds so it was just myself and my wife surrounded by a beautiful landscape. I sacrificed about 20 seconds of totality but still experienced an amazing 1min 50sec. It was my first eclipse and fulfilled a life long ambition.

Our skies were cloud free with some smoke haze from forest fires but the haze did not effect the eclipse itself. Using binoculars I could see the corona in detail plus the two prominence's that are captured in all the photos. I've no other total eclipse to compare from, but i was surprised at how "dirty" the sky appeared during totality, I've seen others report this too. Maybe just a result of the smoke haze. The 360 sunset behind all the surrounding mountain ranges was a very special sight.

That was the fastest 2 minutes of my life.

jfSDAS

Hi all,

The first meeting of the Irish Astronomical Society for the 2017/18 season on Monday, September 25th will feature reports from various people about the recent total solar eclipse which swept across the US. The talk is at 8pm in #8 Ely Place, Dublin 2 (Ely House, the Knights of Columbanus building, which is just off St. Stephen's Green). All are welcome and admission is free.

The format of the evening will be more a Q&A with various people about their eclipse experiences and other sights they took in while in the US. Contributions from the audience are welcome also as they probably will be others along who travelled to see the eclipse.

Hope to see you there!

John

ThunderCat

Late to the party with my reply but what an unbelievable and amazing experience seeing the total solar eclipse in person was.


So we arrived into Portland the evening before the event. After taking a look around the city centre and getting a bite to eat we get back to the hotel around 10pm where I stick on the local news on the TV. It shows the huge volumes of traffic on the roads and I start to panic. I knew there would be traffic but the scene on the TV looks like utter chaos with nothing moving at all. At this point I'm considering getting into the car and driving south to where I need to be right there and then but we decide that even a few hours sleep will stand to us.


So I abandon my planned 5am departure (it's only an hours drive under normal conditions, totality was at 10:17am) and we set off at around 2am or 2:30am instead. I avoided the I5 highway and took the parallel 99W road as advised by an Oregon native. The roads were virtually empty. Couldn't believe it. Around each corner I expected to see a queue of cars but each turn revealed stretches of road equally as quiet as the last. Pretty soon we reach the northern reaches of the zone of the totality. I was happy with that because even if we encountered traffic from now on, we would at least get to see 30 seconds of the eclipse from where we were. All the weather reports pointed to clear skies too so I relaxed a great deal from this point on.


We keep driving south and soon I am smack bang where I need to be - in the zone close to the centre line where we will get two full minutes of totality. Thanks to google maps I had 5 or so spots picked out where we could park up and watch the eclipse but before driving to any of these spots which were all fairly close, we stop at a petrol station in the next town we came to (a place called Monmouth) to stretch the legs. Inside I hear other tourists chatting amongst themselves and I see one ask the cashier if the park was around the corner. The cashier confirmed it was and I decided to check out the park too while I was in the town. It was perfect. Plenty of parking spaces and not too many trees to block the view. So we decided this would be the place. Despite getting lost in Portland just after setting off and stopping at the petrol station for a break, it still wasn't even 5am yet so we get the head down and have a few hours sleep. Turns out the queues I was looking at on the news on the TV were to get into the eclipse party/camping zones of Madras and Salem and weren't typical of the other roads leading to the zone of totality. I'm not even sure looking back on it that the footage they were showing was live either. I learned this fact when watching the next nights news and it showed all the cars leaving those areas.


So I awoke at 7:30am and went on the grass to get a spot to lay down a blanket and set up my camera. There was already a great buzz about the place with more and more people arriving and setting up their own equipment every minute. This park must surely have never seen this volume of people before and judging by car reg plates people were travelling here from all over. No-one was without solar glasses either and most even had solar filters for their cameras and binoculars and there were one or two solar scopes set up also. As the morning went on it got warmer and it really was a pleasant experience sitting on the grass watching the moon slowly eat away at the sun. Considering this part of the United States can be very Irish like in it's weather, the clear blue skies and bright sun was Christmas come early for me.


It wasn't until the moon covered 60% or so of the sun that I began to notice the light levels dropping. Prior to that it was not obvious at all what was happening going by light levels alone but perhaps I wasn't paying close enough attention. Anyways from that point on it got surreal. The light is almost hard to describe but the best way I can put it is from that point on, right up until 95% of the sun was covered, it was like looking through sunglasses. Everywhere you looked the low tint of light that you get through looking through sunglasses was evident. This continued right until the last minute or so before totality. Then it got weird. Very quickly the darkness took hold and the temperature noticeably dropped. A lad near me was counting down the last minute for the benefit of the crowd and we all knew it was near. The tension, excitement and expectation of the crowd was tangible. Everyone was nervously shifting on their toes and letting out excited noises in anticipation of what was to come.


In the last few seconds before totality I saw a couple of birds diving for the nearest tree and I looked across at a golden retriever sat beside his owner and the dog did not seem in the least bit phased by what was going on around him. And then it happened. Totality. Some people remained silent while others were yelling and clapping. I was somewhere in between as I was babbling away making noises I don't think I've made before trying to take in the majesty before me. I had tears rolling down my face and I was not in control of my emotions at all!! It was the single most amazing thing I have ever seen or will ever see. The universe was alive and the pulsating corona streaming out around the moon was the heartbeat. I've never felt so small and insignificant looking at it but at the same time the luck of living on a planet where this occurs, at a time when it occurs the way it does and being able to comprehend what it is that I am seeing certainly offsets that insignificance. The man beside me I think felt somewhat similar as he sank to his knees at the sight.


But all too soon the two minutes are up and the daylight returns as quickly and dramatically as it left. I had good intentions prior to the eclipse of getting a few shots with a zoom lens then changing for a wide angle lens to get a few more shots but in reality I was lucky to get any photos at all. I had said to myself that for the first minute I would only look at the eclipse and not touch the camera, and the second minute could be spent trying to get a few shots but I just couldn't tear my eyes away from it. I didn't look at the crowd and I didn't try and pick out other planets and stars. I just didn't have time and didn't want to look away either. I did end up getting a few shots I was happy with and I will cherish them but seeing the eclipse with your own eyes and taking in what is happening is the most important thing. I was only able to stay another 10 mins or so after totality to take in the view of the moon continuing on it's journey as we had a long drive ahead of us down the coast. Traffic was almost as quiet for us leaving there too as the main bulk of it was heading against us towards Portland. It was all I spoke about for the rest of the journey that day and every now and then I'd catch myself subconsciously looking up at the sun to see if it would happen again. Wishful thinking eh! But I feel like this could very well become an addiction and is most certainly not a box ticked for me now that I have seen one. I want more. Spain in 2026 and 2027 are something to look forward to now, especially the 2027 one which will be in the region of 5 mins totality. With a bit of luck I can pester my family members enough in the meantime to join me for them as it really is something we all should see if we can.


Anyway, I realise this is a very long post but once I started typing I found it hard to stop.

jfSDAS

Fantastic report Thundercat and great images. It really brought back memories of my first eclipse reading your account - I too was emotional at the whole experience.

Brilliant you got a clear run on the road to the zone of totality too. As you mentioned, the vast majority seemed to have been heading to Madras and areas SE of Portland. I met John Daly, who was on the Cork Astronomy Club trip to Salem, and he said they flew down the road from Portland on the bus the morning of the eclipse.

Roll on 2019!

John

ThunderCat

jfSDAS wrote: »

Fantastic report Thundercat and great images. It really brought back memories of my first eclipse reading your account - I too was emotional at the whole experience.

Brilliant you got a clear run on the road to the zone of totality too. As you mentioned, the vast majority seemed to have been heading to Madras and areas SE of Portland. I met John Daly, who was on the Cork Astronomy Club trip to Salem, and he said they flew down the road from Portland on the bus the morning of the eclipse.

Roll on 2019!

John

Thanks John. Yea 2019 passes right through Buenos Aires so although it may be a bit of a trek to get there, once there you could watch it from outside your hotel if you so wanted.