totm may 2024 "Great American Eclipse" II: April 8 2024

[Gargamel]

Only?

Line for the air and space museum is only just out the door now.    May head over.     Post eclipse Waffle House called first.  

[cubinator]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

From my vantage there was a tiny point of bright yellow /orange light on the south limn of the moon.  Guessing it was a mountain or trench

 

1 hour ago, Superfluous J said:

Everybody where I was saw it too. I'm'a google it later.

A big solar prominence. I got photos of it I'll share soon.

[darthgently]

Nice shot.  Also: at least one Starlink sat has a camera!  All v2s?  One could hope 

 

[Brotoro]

Starlink satellites have cameras? I did not know this.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

4 minutes ago, Brotoro said:

Starlink satellites have cameras? I did not know this.

And apparently experience turbulence.

[Gargamel]

I saw at least two flares/prominences.  The bright red spot on the bottom side, and a bigger one that only showed up in my photos at about the 4 o’clock position.  

[cubinator]

The innermost part of the corona was so bright! I had a hard time focusing on the whole thing.

I'm gonna wait to mess with photos for the most part till I get home in a few days.

[darthgently]

5 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

And apparently experience turbulence.

Or just harmonic oscillation of extended things like panels from attitude corrections.  Like the ISS, these sats constantly adjust attitude to keep one side facing dirtward.   The main antennas are phased array I think so that should give some slack in exactness.  But I really don't know 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Here's a few of my shots.  

This first is actually my favorite.  Had to build an eclipse viewer out of an Amazon box as a show-and-tell to my students (hoping they'd build one).  Tested it out just before we hit the road and captured this image of the sun and the trees in my yard.  Pin hole camera effect is quite cool!

The next few are just progression shots.  Using a hand-held cell phone with eclipse glasses floating in front of the camera.  Highly technical set up.  Professional Jarheads only.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Cell did not quite do the totality justice.  Can see Jupiter in the shot - but not the solar prominence or really much else other than the weirdly colored sky.

 

Eager to see what youse guis with better settups / more experience produce!

Edited April 8 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[cubinator]

9 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Here's a few of my shots.  

This first is actually my favorite.  Had to build an eclipse viewer out of an Amazon box as a show-and-tell to my students (hoping they'd build one).  Tested it out just before we hit the road and captured this image of the sun and the trees in my yard.  Pin hole camera effect is quite cool!

The next few are just progression shots.  Using a hand-held cell phone with eclipse glasses floating in front of the camera.  Highly technical set up.  Professional Jarheads only.

  Hide contents

  Hide contents

Cell did not quite do the totality justice.  Can see Jupiter in the shot - but not the solar prominence or really much else other than the weirdly colored sky.

 

Eager to see what youse guis with better settups / more experience produce!

That's a great shot of the pinhole with the trees! I took a similar shot with the eclipse glasses over my phone. I tried to take video with my phone of the people and environment during most of the totality,  while not watching my screen, and left the solar imaging to the fancy tracking scope on the ground. Got a whole timelapse of the rest.

[Ultimate Steve]

I saw it! Clouds covered nearly the whole sky in Ohio, but they were thin and high enough that we could see right through them. Pictures coming later maybe. Was really cool watching the sky change colors, especially right before totality ended, like a really fast sunrise but in an unusual spot!

[tater]

2 hours ago, Brotoro said:

We are headed back to Abilene base camp via the back roads, which don’t seem very busy. Maybe the interstate is busy?

In their infinite wisdom, Oklahoma decided to block the right lane of I 40 with their version of traffic barriers. Not cones but something else. For no reason. No equipment nothing torn up the road was fine and it took us over an hour to go 10 miles.

[Mars-Bound Hokie]

My family came to visit me in Ohio (and they brought the dog, too) a few days ago for the eclipse. We left early this morning for the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta, and it's a good thing we did. The line to the museum parking lot was long, but we found an empty field next to the grounds that charged $40 for parking; totally worth being so close to the exit and having grass for the dog to lie on. The next several hours included having breakfast at Bob Evans, walking around, playing card games and mini cornhole, texting friends, drinking water, my mother messing with her camera's new eclipse filter, and also getting pictures in our "Twice in a Lifetime" t-shirts. 

 

When the partial eclipse began, we would frequently look up with our eclipse glasses on and see the sun turning from an orange circle into Pac-Man, then a crescent moon, and then a tiny sliver. While waiting for totality, I used the phone camera filter Mom gave me and took some partial eclipse photos. Below is my best shot from my phone.

 

• Taken 1434 EDT

 

When totality was getting closer, it got dark in Wapakoneta fast. More specifically, it looked like a storm was coming while all the lights were turning on. It reminded us of when we watched the eclipse of 2017, only there were no farm animals making noise this time while the sun was getting blocked. Finally, when totality hit at 1509 EDT, we saw an amazing thin ring of fire. 

• That was also when Dad bunched us all together to take a group selfie with the total eclipse in the background.

 

• Taken 1511 EDT
  • My best shot from my phone, although I think Mom got clearer images with her fancy digital camera.
• We noticed a small orange spot at the bottom of the ring, but we don't know what it is.

 

• Taken 1511 EDT
• At first glance, you would think it was sunset at Wapakoneta. But it was actually early-mid afternoon, and the sun was blocked thanks to the moon.

 

• Taken 1512 EDT
• I changed my phone's orientation to include the eclipse. If you look closely enough, you can see the center of the ring.
  • And you can see Venus in the sky too.

 

After totality ended, we rushed back into our car and left town immediately. Getting out of Wapakoneta had almost zero traffic; we were so close to the field exit and we had packed everything in the car, including the dog, at least 20 minutes before totality even began. However, when we hit Dayton, that was when the major traffic jams began. Long story short, we returned to my apartment in plenty of time for dinner.

 

And that's my eclipse story.

 

Spoiler

P.S. Months ago, I had done some research on the pros and cons of watching the eclipse in Dayton vs Wapakoneta and sent it to my family for consideration. While we ended up going to the Armstrong Museum due to it being so close to the highway and having a longer totality time, the Air Force Museum would have also been a good option.

 

 

53 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Clouds covered nearly the whole sky in Ohio, but they were thin and high enough that we could see right through them.

Really? Where specifically?

Edited April 8 by Mars-Bound Hokie
Grammar

[SunlitZelkova]

7 minutes ago, Mars-Bound Hokie said:

My family came to visit me in Ohio (and they brought the dog, too) a few days ago for the eclipse. We left early this morning for the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta, and it's a good thing we did.

@Gargamel was there too, perhaps you guys passed by each other!

[tater]

[Mars-Bound Hokie]

3 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

@Gargamel was there too, perhaps you guys passed by each other!

That's awesome, although if we did then neither of us would have recognized the other. 

 

By the way, my family also found cars from 25 states (and one Canadian province) in the field next to the museum grounds (and the nearby Lowe's).

[SunlitZelkova]

Thanks for all you guys’ posts. Very cool to read about. I wasn’t able to see it from where I was (didn’t have proper viewing equipment anyways), but my grandparents saw it from Spokane. Just a little was covered, of course.

When they texted me about it, my grandma mentioned it might be the last eclipse they see in their lifetimes. I remember one of the members of this forum saying life extension technology may suddenly appear one day though, so I like to have a little hope lol.

Interestingly if my grandma was to live to 102, the same age my great grandpa was until he passed away two weeks ago, she might live just long enough to see the 2044 one. This, obviously, would be feasible even without any new medical advancements.

7 minutes ago, tater said:

Is this your picture? Regardless, it’s a great shot.

[tater]

Yeah, my image

Pictures really don’t do it justice. Maybe if you’re a really phenomenal photographer, and it’s near sunrise or sunset so that the eclipse is near terrain so you can compose something really amazing you could get one 1000th of it in a picture.

Hearing the collective gasps and “oh my God!” in the park was pretty amazing

In short, go to Spain in 2026.

Edited April 9 by tater

[mikegarrison]

So did the world end? I heard from a friend in Texas that some of the locals were worried that might happen.

[Gargamel]

25 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

@Gargamel was there too, perhaps you guys passed by each other!

Yup!   I was on the corner of the corn field next to lowes! 

Edited April 9 by Gargamel

[tater]

In the car, we’re talking about other events I have seen that are in the same league. For celestial stuff, this is orders of magnitude more impressive than anything else I’ve seen. If there were someday a really bright, naked eye comment that might be in kind of the same league. Maybe. For other natural stuff? Seeing the Himalayas. That reset my scale for mountains. Seeing wildlife on the African savanna reset my notions about animals. 

Edited April 9 by tater

[Mars-Bound Hokie]

31 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

So did the world end? I heard from a friend in Texas that some of the locals were worried that might happen.

PLOT TWIST: that was no moon.

 

30 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Yup!   I was on the corner of the corn field next to lowes! 

Dang it, I was so close. We parked less than 100 feet from the corn field entrance.

[TheSaint]

46 minutes ago, tater said:

In short, go to Spain in 2026.

I have a friend in Barcelona who keeps bugging me to visit....

[Brotoro]

I've seen four total solar eclipses, and this one was certainly the best. Part of that was the duration (over four minutes, whereas the others were two-and-a-fraction minutes)… this gives you more time to see things, so I was able to waste some time taking pictures (I really need a better light source to help with changing camera settings), and this was the first time I had a telescope to view totality. 

But I think it looked so interesting because of all the clouds. All the previous eclipses I'd seen were with clear or mostly clear skies (maybe some high thin clouds). This time there were a lot of clouds surrounding us, so the horizon got much darker than normal. And the eerily lit up clouds flanking the other-worldly glow of the solar corona looked cool. Having Venus and Jupiter pop out so obviously at totality was also nice. I was able to find Aldebaran (since I wanted to see an actual star), but I couldn't see Mercury or the comet (too much high haziness, I think…plus, you don't have too much time to look for stuff). Binoculars were very helpful.

BUT, interesting as all those clouds made things, I'd feel better with a clear sky. Things looked really iffy during the initial partial phases. The Sun was blocked by clouds for ten or fifteen minutes at a time. Then when got a big blue hole in the clouds with twenty-five minutes to go until totality, it was a relief…until it became clear that those clouds at the bottom edge of the hole were going to get up by the Sun before totality (fast moving clouds). And one cloud blocked the Sun five minutes before totality…and the crowd wailed…but it was clear to me that it was going pass over the Sun quickly, and the other clouds were going either side. But, arrrrggghhh, the suspense leading up to totality was killing me. Will it be clear?? Will a cloud cover it at the last second?? So, even though the clouds looked cool…on the whole, I'd prefer a completely clear sky, thanks anyway.

Edited April 9 by Brotoro

[Brotoro]

I looked at a lot of cloud forecasts on various websites covering Texas for days and days before the eclipse, and the National Weather Services sites for Dallas/Fort Worth and for San Antonio helped me narrow down my choice to the DFW area (of my selected range I was willing to travel to). But the most accurate picture of the cloudiness for the particular site I chose were gotten from cleardarksky.com. I use that site a lot for nighttime observing, but it proved to accurately predict what was going to happen… although, I only looked at this source once I got down to choosing a final site 6 hours before totality. For example, the data looks like this (for a stored site Waxahachie, Texas, near where I was). When you click on that link, you'll get the upcoming predictions for that site, of course.
http://www.cleardarksky.com/c/WxhchTXkey.html

you can click on the little boxes in the Cloud Cover line to get details for that particular time. And it said there would be mostly cloudiness until about Noon, and then better conditions for Noon to 2PM, and then much clearer for a couple hours after that. Which is exactly what happened. Being armed with that info was a bit of solace during the early overcast times when we feared we might see nothing…since the trends unfolded as predicted.