Missed it, clouded out.



Still got some cool pics of 360° sunset.

quote:

Originally posted by Vgex:
Super let down in Central TX. Complete cloud cover. Got dark sure, but only a couple of peeks of the eclipse while being obscured. 1/10. Waste of time.

Got a call from a friend of mine in San Antonio. She said the clouds kept obscuring it during the buildup, so she gave up and went back inside. As soon as she was indoors, the whole place suddenly went dark. Dogs stopped barking and birds stopped chirping. Nothing about dogs and cats moving in together, though. Then it got light again and amazingly, the world was still there.

Skins' pictures are way better than mine.
All we saw was cloudy sky.

We drove to southern Illinois after visiting with family in the Quad Cities, stayed with friends in O'Fallon, IL and drove to Irvington, IL, a small town of 600 north of I-64 that had 3 minutes of totality. Had a laid back time with another 30 or so people in a park and left right after totality and beat all the traffic on I-64 that had to come up from Carbondale or Mount Vernon and are deep into Iowa already. Clouds were thin and high and the kids got to experience a great show. Street lights came on and everything. I tried to convince my buddy who was going to get 99.6% at his house where we were staying to venture at least 20 miles east to get at least 30 seconds of totality but they were too worried about traffic.

I experienced 2017 in my home town of Washington, MO. Hope to be around for 2044 or 2045 to see the next one!

My guy was in Clarksville, TX. They got a well timed brief break in the clouds.

We got very lucky. It was really cloudy and then just as the total eclipse began, the clouds cleared and we had a great view. I did a nice time lapse video of just how dark it got, but I don’t know how to post videos.







This is how dark it got:





I got lucky somehow and was able to upload and share one video, but now I can’t figure out how to do it again for another!!! So here is the link. I have no idea how I got the proper embed link before.

https://youtube.com/shorts/x5Y3qzo2jyM?feature=share

I'm freakin' out

https://ibb.co/album/RNBgxW

Some of my pics

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
I'm freakin' out

As you should be.

I just don’t get all the hullabaloo?
There was one was I was kid, maybe 10 or so, we made these things to look at it with a couple of paper plates, then there was one a few years ago, people were driving and traveling to see it. I was working had those little glasses so I stopped and looked it.

Today, I watched The Joker and did not even bother going outside when it was happening.

Complete nonsense. Public schools were out and most private schools had early release.
What complete nonsense.

Sorry for the large pic. I'm doing pics from my phone for 1st time.

For me, it was the adventure. Meeting up with family was priority. It was interesting seeing the eclipse. It was fun trying to take pics of it. Still having even more fun visiting family for next few days.

Needs to be bigger. Like, I-need-a-new-house-because-my-monitor-won't-fit-in-this-one big.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
I just don’t get all the hullabaloo?
There was one was I was kid, maybe 10 or so, we made these things to look at it with a couple of paper plates, then there was one a few years ago, people were driving and traveling to see it. I was working had those little glasses so I stopped and looked it.

Today, I watched The Joker and did not even bother going outside when it was happening.

Complete nonsense. Public schools were out and most private schools had early release.
What complete nonsense.

To each their own as we all have things we want to do or could care less about. I have seen several partial solar eclipse, but never a total eclipse and been in the direct path like this.

Basically it was a once in a lifetime possible event for me. It has been over 140 years since there was one here in Texas, and there won’t be another one until 2317. So this was my one and only chance to ever experience it and I have to say it was amazing. I would not have traveled some crazy distance to see it as some people traveled to Texas from other countries. I was able to sit with my wife and my mom at my mom’s house and enjoy a cool event.

All clouds here and we were right in the center of the path of totality. It got dark, then got light. I drank beer. Meh.

Naturally it's a beautiful cloudless night right now.

We (older son dilettante and I) had abandoned the Texas plan; I flew to DC area and he, his wife, and my year-and-a-half old grandson drove to Newport VT.
Weather turned out to be perfect. We found a restaurant where we were able to park, eat, use the restroom, and had only a short distance to shlep equipment. Large, friendly crowd, not all crowded together. Didn’t try to take photos, just observed with a Kowa spotting scope with Baader solar filter.
Whole thing was amazing, but driving back to hotel in NH, normally one hour, took 4.

All in all, felt extremely fortunate for everything to have worked out so well.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
I just don’t get all the hullabaloo?
There was one was I was kid, maybe 10 or so, we made these things to look at it with a couple of paper plates, then there was one a few years ago, people were driving and traveling to see it. I was working had those little glasses so I stopped and looked it.

Today, I watched The Joker and did not even bother going outside when it was happening.

Complete nonsense. Public schools were out and most private schools had early release.
What complete nonsense.

Have you ever seen one in totality? Until today, I didn't understand the difference. We were in the 90-ish% for the last one and did the glasses and all that. It was interesting, but nothing like what we saw today. I think the most amazing thing was the difference in the level of darkness between just a tiny sliver of the sun not being occluded by the moon, and the darkness at totality. Within a matter of seconds we went from what I would compare to an "early evening" level of daylight at 99% to basically nighttime at totality, with a just a fringe of twilight around the horizon. It was so dark that you could see stars, and you could look directly at the sun/moon without eye protection, and see the glow around the outside of the moon from the sun behind it. It was crazy how much light just a tiny sliver of the sun can produce compared to when it's completely blocked.

After viewing the last one from outside totality I had the same impression as you, that it was kind of interesting but no big deal. My wife had a class scheduled for today, and I have a busy week at work so we almost didn't make the drive to my parents'. Our house was supposed to be at 98% and I figured what's the point in driving 7 hours for 2% more? But it did seem like a good excuse to go see family, so last week we decided to move stuff around to make it happen. Both my wife and I were glad we did...it was totally worth it.

I was a bit worried about traffic for the drive home (ODOT had those portable signs up everywhere warning about heavy traffic for the eclipse), but it ended up being a complete non-issue. I barely even took the cruise control off for the whole 3.5 hour drive home. I didn't get any decent pics because all I had was my phone, but I'm kinda glad I didn't mess with taking my big camera. It was nice to be able to just look around and observe everything and not be messing with a camera setup. I don't know as I've ever seen a pic that does it justice, anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/s.../1777493587925647795

Now that is different! I like it.