Did you experience the totality? We did. But there's been so much driving that I'm not in the state of mind to discuss whether it was life-changing and so forth. I have some more pictures, not serious pictures of the actual corona, which I leave to professional photographers with special equipment. This is just a picture I happened to take where we were. Tomorrow, I’ll show you the cool little town where we witnessed the celestial spectacle. Now is the time to cuddle up and watch Purdue beat UConn.April 8, 2024
Where were you when the light went out?
Did you experience the totality? We did. But there's been so much driving that I'm not in the state of mind to discuss whether it was life-changing and so forth. I have some more pictures, not serious pictures of the actual corona, which I leave to professional photographers with special equipment. This is just a picture I happened to take where we were. Tomorrow, I’ll show you the cool little town where we witnessed the celestial spectacle. Now is the time to cuddle up and watch Purdue beat UConn.
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excellent.
Hope the traffic wasn't a problem.
I've been without power for 3 days.
It would have been a six hour drive down to southern Illinos and then six hours back. I don't like southern Illinois all that much.
Huskies will win. Big East over Big Ten.
"Where were you when the light went out?"
Houl ton, ME. 1,500 miles there, 1,500 mile home (still to do). But it was the best odds, so that's what we did. And I am happy we did. Perfect skies. As awesome as I remember it from the last two times. And contrary to all the horse manure about serenity, and animal behavior, and temperature drops, and sharp shadows (I'm an imaging physicist, so the sharp shadows are kinda cool), the main, and only attraction was the SUN! Man, was it beautiful! And dynamic. The hot pink solar prominences were many, especially along the trailing edge as the moon pulled away. Another remarkable feature was the color of the sunlight during the Bailey's Beads/Diamond Ring phase. Phosphorescent, searing white/silver. I'm still on a high.
How lucky are we that the moon and sun are the same size from our perspective?
The most impressive thing about the eclipse was going dark. I mean really dark. Obviously we were in the 100% coverage area. Even the Amish watched it. How could they not?
Afterwards, Interstate 79 south was bumper to bumper leaving Erie, Pa.
I stayed home but near enough to totality. Pic of Doberman with sun projected on her left front paw some minutes before totality. (1 diopter convex lens a meter away focusing sun on paw, you can see its shadow)
PIC
Flickr uncooperative in trying to keep 100 photos in strict time order.
We were unbelievably lucky to have a 3+-minute total break in the clouds right at the 3+-minute totality in the part of Texas where we drive to watch.
The clouds leading up to totality provided interest and suspense, but I'm deeply grateful to have seen the sun's corona with my own eyes.
Also this weekend: we say Jerry Lee Lewis's little sister Linda Gail Lewis, now 75, and her band at Gruene Hall - amazing performance! Wonderful stories! - enjoyed peak wildflowers all over the place, took our visitors to see the alligators at Brazos Bend, had great barbecue, had a lot of great Texas beer, and just discovered an Italian restaurant in Brenham that made the most delicate papparedelle I've ever had. An all-around brilliant success!
I did, and I found it as incredible as promised.
Nebraska beat Purdue.
Creighton beat UCONN.
Creighton beat Nebraska.
Ergo, Creighton is the best college basketball team this season.
Suburbs of Toledo, Ohio. We had totality in our backyard. Had a bunch of family over, put out some snacks, sat around and talked. It was a beautiful Spring afternoon.
It's not life-changing, but it's certainly beautiful.
It was our second total eclipse (saw the 2017 in Nashville). It's cool to see it with "first timers" and see the wonderment and awe when they see the corona.
If I'm alive (I'm only 54), I plan on seeing them again in 2044 and 2045.
Not in Georgia...
We saw it near Bloomington IN, perfect and silvery. More than 4 min of totality. A 3.5 hour drive from Chicago. No exceptional traffic. I used to live there at one time so I knew of a perfect little rural cemetery to go to. Just a few folks there, plenty of room.
In Bloomington there was an event at the University of Indiana Stadium with William Shatner of Star Trek fame singing and dancing the eclipse away. We did not attend. Ha.
I have now reached nirvana and have died to my animal nature to become a new sublime and powerful creature of love and hope in the face of an indifferent and hostile Democratic universe.
I was in my backyard where we were fortunate to have totality and no clouds. It was beautiful, but, as I feared, I was disappointed after reading all the hype about the transcendence of it. My family members all experienced it as thrilling. They can't stop talking about it. Made the hairs on their head stand up.
I was most impressed with the way the last sliver of sun turned from orange to red as the eclipse slipped into totality. We could see a little dot of red that persisted throughout the time of the totality at the bottom of the sun. There was a strange quality to the ambient light that you don't usually see, and it was kind of neat to see the horizon's pale glow.
The temperature did indeed drop and a slight breeze kicked up as a result. Just before totality, the neighborhood dogs started barking, then they were quiet. You could see the birds flying to the trees just before totality and they were noisier just before and after, but silent during totality. Our cat slept through the entire thing. Didn't even notice her patch of sunlight near the window had gone away for a bit.
I'm glad I had the opportunity to see it, but I wouldn't travel to see it again, and I would have been disappointed if I had travelled just to see it this time.
I couldn't help it, I yelled, "Whoa!" Everyone in our little group yelled something involuntarily. I was too gobsmacked to hear the specifics of what anyone else said.
By the way, your photo is very good. You can see the little speck of the moon in the center of the sun.
Not this time (totality, anyway), but I saw the 2017 one. It was exceedingly cool, but... life-changing? Maybe, I suppose, if you haven't had much of a life.
Did Althouse and/or Meade see the pink horizon? No deep reflection, just yes or no.
I see you caught an image of Venus in your pic, I could see several planets in naked eye and a couple of stars in binoculars
more like twilight than dark
Vincennes, IN.
In the courtyard at a nursing care facility. No awe or transcendence for me, but it was sweet to see residents in wheelchairs with their eclipse glasses looking upward.
My mom’s hometown is a few miles from there across the Wabash. The area has quite a bit of history, but it’s not easy to get to and underpopulated now.
@Althouse, here in the Shenandoah Valley the wife and I saw about a 90% eclipse from the comfort of the Amish-crafted wooden glider on our back (south facing) deck. The weather was comfortable - in the low 70s with a light breeze - and there were only a very few high clouds to mar our view through our solar glasses. It was marvelous!
Next eclipse will be twenty years from now. As a 77 year old Baby Boomer I don't quite expect to be here to see it.
At my SIL’s in Henderson, KY. The day went from completely overcast to almost completely clear to spotty clouds that broke for the3 minute show. Spectacular like the 2017 event we witnessed!
Twas full sun revealed wan-cast neither obi nor mobi, though't seemed dark side shroud fallen.
No mortal walked near when the troubling strange light struck this visage askance and unawares. I was bathed penumbra, yet unrealizing. In a pale moment I longed then of Freeman Hunt's cool temperament, but Drago's taunt DEMOCRACTICAL! harshed the cool dim mellow. Then I wondered, tis Luna's shadow askewing me mental, or those last 9 beers and the weed I'd smoked a long season 37 seconds past?
It's hours passed and still ungrokked, but Ann and Lawrence be still wished well wher'er they in real or illusion dwell.
As are all of you, even unto Freder long called Assholish.
---
I forgot the whole thing and then went outside at 3pm. There was full sun but very dim light. What a coincidence, and I had no idea at first what I was seeing. Surreal. Coleridge type shit. Freaky man, and I am not kidding.
@Original Mike:
Ya know, Mike, I realized too late to comment yesterday that I had misread the "path of totality" for the eclipse.
Sorry. My bad.
I'm glad you got to see it in all its glory.
"that I'm not in the state of mind to discuss whether it was life-changing"
Spoiler - it won't be.
We didn't see totality in Milwaukee but it was strange here. The sky was dusky high up and bright along the horizon. The birds started chattering and flying about and dogs barked. I was using a steamer for small holes to see the bite out of the sun and it had hundreds of holes arranged in a pattern so that there were hundreds of little eclipsed suns in a pattern. It was fun.
I should have left much earlier than I did- when I got to I-75, it was jam-packed and after an hour and about 20 miles north, I gave in and went home. I now wish I had persisted- I probably would have made it to southern Indiana eventually since I gave myself an extra 2 hours to make the trip. However, I got to see the one in 2017, so it wouldn't have been a new experience, but I did really want to see this one since it might be the last one I get a chance at until 2044-45 at which time I will be 78 years old and probably either demented or dead.
Drove 3 hours to Jay Peak resort near the Canadian border. Incredible perfect blue sky. Awesome experience. Saw the last eclipse 99%...determined to experience totality and we did! Worth every minute of the bumper to bumper traffic for the 71/2 hours that it took to drive back home.
It gave me a chance to go see my sister and nephews. It was a nice day and a cool experience.
I just got home from Newport Vermont. Up 27 hours straight. Totality worth it.
~70% totality here in SE NC, so we noticed it here but it was never very dark. Glad that many communities enjoyed an extra shot of cash for being on the path. Lucky them.
There are 20+ head of beef cattle on the 20 acres next to our property, and from what I could tell the eclipse concerned them not at all. We were at ~97% totality.
The judge grudgingly released our jury panel after selection but before voir dire so I got to head home just before maximum darkness. We had about 7/10 cloud cover at the time and were south of the path of totality so the view was interesting but not spectacular.
It was about 12:45am this morning. The storm came through and must have knocked down some trees.
It was kind of awesome. I don’t know what the little red spark in the corona was, but it was very cool. The thing that I did not expect was to be surrounded by a 360 degree sunset, where the mountains were dark against a pale yellow sky and the lake reflecting them looking like one of Althouse’s photos.
It slipped my mind long enough to theorise that it looked like it was going to rain while the sun was shining.
It may not have been life changing, but it was deeply mood altering. I plan to take a break from social media, maybe for the summer. I feel like the internet will not lack for snark without me. Maybe in the fall I will come back as someone else who doesn’t comment on politics. Or maybe I will just kick the habit altogether.
Thanks, Ann, for the wonderful blog.
That’s actually one of the more interesting photos I’ve seen- well done…
As I mentioned elsewhere. I rigged a 60X spotting scope on a tripod and on another tripod I taped a white index card and viewed the eclipse from a comfortable seat at 10X magnification. Having to nudge the scope every now and then as the sun traversed the sky. I got to see the Space Station superimposed on the sun.
Experience the totality? Hell, I am the totality! Wait, that seems to imply I feel no awe.
I saw about 89% of totality from the eastern side. If unaware of the eclipse, it would have been underwhelming: mid afternoon seemed a lot like a dark and gray late afternoon. With eclipse glasses staring at the sun was great -- it was just a tiny crescent.
* The colors of plants in a park and high rise buildings changed dramatically -- less blue and much more red/brown. My photos resemble an HDR image or art filter.
* It's was fun holding a piece of white paper under a tree with wind blowing through the leaves. Lots of crescents, and it looked more like moving water than ordinary shadows.
* As expected, it was noticeably cooler and breezy during the eclipse.
No worries, effinayright.
Stayed home in Milwaukee, a 90% coverage area. Clear sky. At max cover time the light level dropped somewhat, like you have on a hazy day, but never really got dark. If you didn't know there was an eclipse you wouldn't have noticed at all.
Purdue is overrated, as is Zach Edey. He won't be a good pro. Too slow and stiff, and really only can play with his back to the basket. Sure he scores a lot of points, but that's because Purdue goes to him in the post virtually every trip. His skill is his height.
There is only one Big Ten university in the Hoosier state that has recorded a NCAA Men's Basketball D1 championship this morning. It's not in West Lafayette. Full respect to Coach Painter and his team for a magnificent season and great memories. Congratulations to U Conn for their great accomplishment.
If it was easy, we'd all be doing it.
According to CBS, William Shatner enjoyed the eclipse in Bloomingdale, Indiana.
I've never been there.
We had almost nothing here in South Florida. Sunny as always. At peak we were supposedly at the 57% eclipse level. But driving from the downtown area here to my home, I did notice the light had a sort of 'filtered' look to it. I remember that look from previous eclipses. I'm sure there's a name for it, but I don't know what the term would be. Just a filtered light. Not the full, starkly bright south Florida sunshine. That lasted for about 45 minutes, but that's it. My dog- the old girl- didn't notice a thing.
While driving from the downtown area, I did pass our main police station and county courthouse. There was a row of policemen and lawyers along the curb, all wearing their eclipse glasses staring upwards, hoping to get some glimpse of something. I should have stopped to take that picture. It was pretty funny to see. I hope no one was in need of police midday yesterday.
You're So Vain:
"Well I hear you went up to Saratoga and your horse naturally won
Then you flew your Lear jet up to Nova Scotia
To see the total eclipse of the sun" (Carly Simon 1972)
Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?
1968 Doris Day movie co-starring...yikes...Robert Morse, Terry Thomas, Patrick O'Neal (as her husband), Jim Backus, Pat Paulsen, and Steve Allen.
Ghastly.
On a plane coming home from Baltimore.
Dindu nuttin.
Eclipse, what eclipse? Cloudy/rainy yesterday morning. Only 20% obscuration, so not noticeable.
Urban Vines in Westfield IN. 3 minutes and 8 seconds of totality.
We drove US-31 down from Michigan (backup at Plymouth IN) and US-31, US-30 and I-94 back to Chicago. The worst traffic delays were in Chicago, where Jean-Baptiste Pointe du Sable Lake Shore Drive was closed while President Let's Go Brandon was being moved from one fund-raising event to another.
Sad about Purdue, but UConn outplayed them.
Lampasas Texas. Not life changing, but the skies were clear enough and the traffic wasn’t bad. It turns out that we all quite like Texas! That was a nice bonus.
So much for basketball predictions.
Study of the heavens is the original religious activity and scholarly priesthood (I.e. the teachers). Somebody way back named the constellations and taught their activities to be matters of gods controlling life and death. Are we going back there? If so, the astrologers are front and center again.
We took our daughter up to a roadside visitor center overlooking the valley between Sideling Hill and Blue Mountain in Maryland. No big crowds and parking was more than ample. I had two time lapse cameras going, pointed not toward the sun but toward the valley to see I I could catch the movement of the shadow.
Modern digital devices are too good at adjusting for low light, so the scene pretty much looked the same up through the point of peak occlusion. But it was a good day for people watching and one kind lady was leaving early and gave her eclipse glasses to us so we all got to see the progress.
We felt the dip in temperature even though our area was in the 92% zone, and the patchy clouds obliged us at peak occlusion.
It was surreal in the drive toward Maryland, with the PA traffic signs urging us to turn on headlights at 3:00. Out conveyance has automatic headlights so the van obliged all by itself, but it really wasn't dark enough to justify the need. It was a nice day out.
In the Philadelphia area, we had a near-total eclipse and I went into a nearby forest with mah dog to watch. But a bank of dark clouds rolled in right before and covered the action---only to roll on out afterwards. Still, it was interesting to see the light change to a strangely "wrong" watered-down gray, and to feel the temperature drop and a breeze pick up. And why were so many dogs barking??
I was watching AF1 leave Madison. Joe Biden flew here, and back, to spend 15 minutes in the gym at MATC, declaring that this time, the College Debt thing would work.
It seems to me like an incredible waste of time and money. Biden didn't take questions, and did very little interacting with the public. What an enfeebled candidate.
Original Mike- thanks for the description!
We are in LA area and had very little eclipse, but the light filtering through the trees made little moon shaped shadows on the ground, and that made me happy all day
My son drove from his home to a small town in Indiana and said he can’t think of a more awesome experience It really is the opposite of everything we are used to and our bodies and brains know so well
The diminished sunlight at 89% totality here was kind weird, and the temperature did drop a little. But other than that, life proceeded. I did take pictures of the shadow of the sun using a collander. That's always fun.
@Louie the Looper
Correct
"I see you caught an image of Venus in your pic"
Aligned with the orb on the top of the American flag!
I need a tag "Things I didn't notice at the time"
"We could see a little dot of red that persisted throughout the time of the totality at the bottom of the sun."
The red dot absorbed much of my attention. It was the thing I saw that I didn't expect.
"In the courtyard at a nursing care facility. No awe or transcendence for me, but it was sweet to see residents in wheelchairs with their eclipse glasses looking upward."
The look of other people looking is one of the best things to see and probably the best photo opportunity for those who lack special equipment.
Work.
Some of us went outside.
"We could see a little dot of red that persisted throughout the time of the totality at the bottom of the sun."
With the aid of binoculars, there were at least a dozen prominences. And they were dynamic, changing throughout the transit of the moon.
Western New York here.
There was hope for a partly sunny day (was very sunny on Sunday) but as I said - this is Western New York - and the Great Lakes have a lot of say if it’s going to be a cloudy day - and so it was.
But went into this knowing that and recorded video at two locations to document the change in light and audio of the surrounding area. One camera was about six miles from the eclipse centerline facing east (I was here) and one about 20 miles from the centerline facing southwest.
Clouds and all it was still incredible. I can’t think of a natural phenomenon (that doesn’t involve being close to a life-threatening occurrence such as a volcano, tornado, etc!) where the transition from daylight to dusk/night and back again occurs so quickly. At my location, you could see the light to the east slowly decrease during the period of Totality as the moon trekked across the sun. It got pretty dark - close to what would be in my estimation the equivalent of End of Nautical Twilight / Start of Astronomical Twilight. And bang! - daylight again in 7-9 seconds as Totality ended.
The camera 20 miles from the centerline and to the north captured very well how birds reacted to the sudden loss of daylight. In reviewing the video I heard one Song Sparrow with a full call during the period of Totality and also the distinct wing beats of a Mourning Dove as it flew away. It’s too early in the nesting season to hear Tree Swallows before or after. At this location it got almost completely dark as shown by the video. I would estimate it was equivalent to End of Astronomical Twilight / Start of Night but the cloud cover had a lot to do with that. Peepers? were very noisy almost at the start of Totality. The sky started to lighten up to the west as Totality progressed - I would equate it to what the End of Nautical Twilight / Start of Civil Twilight looks like - but coming out of the west. Again the transition from night to daylight was very fast. I’m sure Great-horned Owls and other nighttime owls were confused by this event! The first bird heard after Totality ended was again a Song Sparrow - singing away.
The videos are already uploaded to iCloud (saving the NSA a few steps in finding haha!) and someone in Japan is working to make a time-lapse version that includes the full period of totality plus 30 seconds on both sides at normal speed, as that is the focal point of the event.
Glad I was able to see this event with a close friend!
Glad for you and Meade that you had that experience.
We had 98% (IIRC) coverage and partly cloudy skies, and spent an hour mostly in the back yard, watching the moon slide across the light. It looked like it was rotating across rather than going across in a straight line, if that makes any sense.
The light dimmed and it got a bit cooler, and the birds relaxed into near silence.
Nothing I hadn't experienced before and didn't expect, but I'm glad I watched.
Seeing the planet(s?) would have been nice, but it would have taken a couple of hours to get to a 100% spot and back.
Yes, that is Venus at the top of the flagpole and that might be Saturn to the right of the flagpole just off the edge of the flag, but I would have check to see if there is a bright star there as well since Saturn's apparent magnitude would probably be over +1 right now, but the location is probably about right- nothing comes to mind immediately.
Jupiter would probably be just off the top edge of the photo- it is still in the early evening sky right now. Unfortunately, for this eclipse, Mercury was far too dim to see with the naked eye as it is in a waxing crescent phase sort of in between the Earth and the Sun (it was evening sky about 3 weeks ago)- the same thing happened in our photos from 2017- we caught Venus and Jupiter in some of the wider angle photos from the total phase, but Mercury I could never identify in the photographs for the same reason- it was just too dim.
Where I live is center of the flight path. So dark, people had flashlights out. Or so I'm told.
I took a nap. Only woke up when it was getting light again.
That one just the right of the flagpole and just off the edge the flag could be Mars, too- I lose track of Mars when it isn't in the evening sky a lot of the time.
Tim in Vermont-
My son sent us a video of the 360degree sunset. What a thing to behold!!!
I went back and forth on whether it was worth it to travel to the next city over for a minute in the totality (we were 99%, but from all accounts, it's 100% or its nothing--that last 1% is where all the real action is). My daughter really wanted to see it, so off we went.
We took the train to avoid traffic, but the train sucked too. Everything else was perfect--we got to a park in time, serendipitously met a friend of our daughter and her family who went to the same park. It was cloudy in the morning with a chance of rain at 3, but the skies cleared just in time. The darkness was a little disappointing because we were in a city and all the city lights came on and the camera magnified the light, but that's not the sun's fault.
There was no quiet awe--the cheering started as the clouds parted and by the time the sun completely disappeared behind the moon, people were already conditioned to cheer at every development. We didn't mind.
I was at what I pre-judged would be the coolest place in all of North America to see the moon eclipse the sun; it was the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio. Nearly on the centerline of the path of the eclipse.
It was purely spectacular; could not have been better. I was worried about other people having this same idea, since the Museum is hard alongside I-75 in northwest-central Ohio. A pretty easy drive from Detroit, Columbus, Indianapolis and Cincinnati. There was a good crowd, a nice crowd, but not overwhelming or overcrowded.
It had everything; the amazing coincidence of being at the museum honoring the first man to walk on the moon that we would all be watching; the hum of traffic on I-75 signalling a part of the world that couldn't be bothered with eclipses; a fantastically humorous deejay playing sun- and moon-themed classics (it really was funny and dleightful, and there was no music during the eclipse itself); and even nearby soaring highway signs for Lowe's, McDonalds and Waffle House which all gloriously lit up as the sun darkened. The flat Ohio landscape gave a wonderful view of a 360 degree sunset. And of course the setting attracted all sorts of amateur astronomy buffs with all kinds of personal equipment for viewing and photgraphing the event.
I cannot imagine a better viewing spot in the U.S. It was totally worth the drive on a lovely day.
Random information. An eclipse of our Sun by our Moon occurs on a constant basis. But you would have to be behind the Moon on a constantly moving basis to see each one. Only rarely is the Earth behind the Moon to produce the human nonsense that happened yesterday in a selected area of the Earth.
I got an 80% eclipse at home. I'd seen the 2017 eclipse, just being about 15 miles from the totality line. It was, of course, more dramatic getting darker. This one gave the surreal sunlight for being 3 pm, but not deep darkening. Just shadows but with light intensity of a diffuse cloudy day It was also a "surprise, in that the most coverage period was in a fortunate break in the solid cloud cover.
A friend's wife in Nashville got a lucky, fringe of cloud "lens" photo of it from there. Full dark cloud cover with one thin hole you can see the eclipse through.
No good pictures for me as I could only see it through the very dark welding lens I had from the 2017 eclipse.
At the beach of Waco Lake just off the end of the runway of Waco regional airport. The clouds were cooperative and we got to see the whole of the full eclipse, and most of the pre- and post-eclipse crescent suns. Pinhole cameras really work for sun viewing.
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