Wow!! Truly amazing. Flew into Nashville this morning. Hung out at the airport until the eclipse. So much was happening in 3-4 minutes. Eclipse snakes/shadows moving on the ground right before totality began. Diamond ring. Then the spectacular glow of the corona. Looking around and seeing sunset colors in 360 degrees of horizon. Temp dropped noticeably. Seeing Venus and Jupiter. And then as soon as the smallest sliver of the sun reappears, it gets light quickly like someone turned on a switch. Headed back into the airport a few minutes after totality ended.
Definitely have the April 8, 2024 eclipse on the calendar. And read today about one in August 2027 which will have totality lasting more than 6 minutes in best locations. Max ever is apparently 7.5 minutes.
81 percent by me, but it was still very bright out and perhaps the slightest bit cooler. The best part were all crescents on the sidewalk filtered through leaves acting as pinhole cameras.
I brought an extra pair of eclipse glasses to work that got shared, but I was noticeably the geekiest one about eclipse in the office.
Today is my mom’s 80th birthday and she and my dad were able to experience totality with us here in SC! I wasn’t sure if it would live up to the hype, but totality is amazing! The whole neighborhood let up cheers and a few fireworks were set off. We had an eclipse/sun/moon playlist going and some sun themed and shaped appetizers and drinks. I had Oreo heads or tails (1/2 choc, 1/2 vanilla) that I separated to help explain the eclipse to my 4 year old granddaughter. She loved it and demonstrating to everyone else how the moon cookie crossed the sun cookie. Our middle S and DIL drove up from Miami and had no trouble getting here but they left at the end of totality and what should be a 2.5 hour drive to GA border has taken almost 6. They have a long night ahead of them.
If you have the opportunity to get in the totality zone in 2024, it will be worth the effort. Totality brings so much more to the experience. It was a magical 2+ minutes. Poor H is on a business trip to Australia, so we may be eclipse chasers in 2024. He needs to experience this!
I want to thank SlithyTove back at post #42 on this thread for strongly suggesting I drive into the “totality zone.” H just happened to be off work. We took our youngest two out of school, picked up our college freshman (who had just been dropped off on Friday), and drove to Nebraska with our eclipse glasses and a picnic lunch. The weather seemed terrible at first–pouring rain as we drove up there, but clearing on and off. We were so lucky that the clouds broke during most of the eclipse and especially during totality. (And the clouds swirling around made it even prettier!) We had no problem whatsoever with traffic, and had an awesome view of 2.5 minutes of totality. Now I understand why people said that 100% is a thousand (or more) times better than 99.9. What a memorable day!
We had an eclipsed themed party complete with goody bags: moon pies, starbursts, eclipse gum, orbit gum, milky ways, Sunkist drink, cheese crackers, glow sticks. For lunch we had crescent roll sandwiches, moonshine peach salsa, mac’n’cheese. Everyone really enjoyed it!
I also highly recommend going to the path of totality for the next eclipse. It was truly magical and takes your breath away. It was so much better than I imagined!
What was so striking to me was the level of brilliance and purity of the corona’s light during totality. If was as if the moon became neon rimmed. Spectacular!
My dad and his astronomy club were in totality in Lexington, SC. No word from him yet.
A good friend lives in the Toledo area, so I guess I should tell her we’ll be coming to visit!
Agree. I pooh-poohed people who told me it was going to be totally different than a partial eclipse. I was wrong. It was astounding.
Madras was way easier to get to than everyone predicted, but just as hard to get out of as everyone predicted! Ugh. But worth it. We popped a bottle of Dom Perignon on the field with our friends. It was magical.
Watched from home and only partial (but pretty good)… It was cool with the glasses and had fun watching on TV from all the different places.
My dad watched it on TV and was thrilled with the coverage.
Husbands work has conference room with big screen and everyone got to watch it. He had glasses so was able to pass them around to a lot of people.
Watching with an interested, educated crowd was fun. A few hundred people at a soccer complex north of Nashville for 2:38 of totality. More tripods with than you usually see in one place, cameras with long lenses and all kinds of adaptations for mounting solar filters. Guys walking around checking out everyone else’s equatorial mounts and plans for switching to totality photography. T-shirts, hot dogs, Italian ice, and plumbing. Mostly clear skies. Absolutely a wonderful day. The one thing we did not have was binoculars, which would have been cool during totality to see some of the planets, or maybe just for the corona. We’ll have those handy in 2024.
My eclipse glasses came from a local brewery, and I got a chuckle from DS when I called them beer goggles.
Funny! I refrained from any comments about the guys (and it was mostly guys) comparing lens lengths and apertures, but missed that one. In any case, it was a thoroughly pleasant gathering.
I’m late to the discussion because we got back from our road trip to Oregon just last night.
Here is my account:
Last Sunday we traveled to my old home town of Madras, Oregon accompanied by more than 100,000 of our closest friends to watch the Great Total Eclipse of 2017. Traffic was fine driving the 1000 miles from San Diego to Madras, but it took three and half hours after we left the highway to travel the last half mile on a country road to the designated “SolarTown” campground.
At length we got in and a found a place and set up camp for the event the next morning. We met up with my brother-in-law who had driven in from Bakersfield and admired his collection of fancy telescopes and cameras that he had spent weeks outfitting with solar filters that he made himself to optimize our watching and recording of the event. I was alarmed that some clouds had rolled in the evening before the show. But early the next morning I crawled out of our tent before sunrise and was relieved to see Venus shining brightly in the dark as it rose in the east. Whew! No clouds. But there was that nagging huge smoke plume billowing up from a forest fire in the Sisters area, but fortunately it seemed to be staying a little south of our line of sight.
Eventually the Big Event came. Right on cue the sun began to slowly disappear behind the shadow of the moon. The totality was every bit as amazing and mysterious as everyone says. It was as though someone had flipped a switch at the moment of totality and the corona magically burst into view. Stars became visible in the dim light and Venus was shining brightly directly overhead. During totality the sun seemed to come alive – not exactly pulsing with life but it seemed to have taken on a consciousness that was looking down on us and saying “Here, take this. This gift is for you.”
Two minutes and two seconds later totality was over and the retreat of the shadow began. I’m always in the mood to collect some scientific data, so I had brought along a thermometer to record the expected temperature drop. By my reckoning the temperature before the shadow first appeared was 82 deg. F. As the shadow slowly advanced blocking out more and more sunlight it dropped seven degrees to 75 degrees F. During the two minutes of totality it plunged another 16 degrees to 59 degrees F. People briefly put on their jackets and sweaters.
Our campground was out near the airport, and shortly after the totality was over a steady stream of dozens of Lear jets and other expensive private planes began taking off and flying away – the rich and famous flying away to leave to the traffic jams to us.
We were in totality on a family/friends farm 2.5 hours from home. It was so . . . glorious . . . i guess is the word. Most people had tears in their eyes. Totality happened so quickly and didnt last long enough. We saw stars too, and like @Scipio said above – it was a gift. Amazing. Touching.
back in our hometown - with 96% totality - our son’s friends said they were underwhelmed. We are so glad we made the effort. Will never ever regret it. The feeling of being so small; how amazing the universe is.
yep - i’ll be at the 2024 eclipse although its nowhere near us!
