U.S. Solar Eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017

[BillTre]

Today I realized that the moon has variable sunblock capabilities.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Timelapse. Not great, but good enough for now.

 

[jtbell]

As Russ mentioned, he came up from Charleston to escape the clouds there, and fortunately didn't get clouded out here! Here he is setting up in the morning:

About 25 minutes before totality:

The physics department was on hand, of course, at their own tent:

Six minutes before the Big Moment:

I decided not to fiddle with my tripod because of the high elevation of the sun which would have made it difficult to use my DSLR's viewfinder. Instead I tried a few hand-held shots which fortunately turned out OK with some help from Photoshop's curves tool. Note Venus (?) in the first picture!

 

[jtbell]

made some nice designs in the shadows of the trees!

Argh! I was going to get a shot like that, too, but forgot about it in the excitement. Also I stayed indoors for a significant part of the time because it was so beastly hot and humid outside.

I remember seeing those patterns during (I think) the 1979 eclipse, which I saw only as a major partial eclipse.

 

[Stavros Kiri]

What was that "vehicle" passing in front of the competing Sun and Moon? Did anyone get that guy's license plates number?

I did! "ISS 2017" ...

Note: This is a real video, originally broadcasted in NASA's live streaming. (I saw it while playing)

 

[davenn]

I decided not to fiddle with my tripod because of the high elevation of the sun which would have made it difficult to use my DSLR's viewfinder. Instead I tried a few hand-held shots which fortunately turned out OK with some help from Photoshop's curves tool. Note Venus (?) in the first picture!

love the corona shot ! well done Dave

 

[russ_watters]

All of the good ones from during totality (and some crowd shots):

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10154758714584249.1073741838.518344248&type=1&l=1aaf9090c8

One embedded...

 

[russ_watters]

As Russ mentioned, he came up from Charleston to escape the clouds there, and fortunately didn't get clouded out here! Here he is setting up in the morning:

Awesome! Mind if I share these outside PF?

 

[stoomart]

Salem, OR

 

[OmCheeto]

From 6 miles east of Mitchell OR.

Took my breath away.

Spectral shot was a bit disappointing:

Both images were extracted from a 6 minute long video.
The autofocus spent about 90% of the time "out" of focus.

Zero luck on the "shadow bands". But I do have a 5 minute long video of a white sheet getting dark, and then light again, if anyone is interested. (I had a spare old camera)

 

[Helios]

I saw the last crescent disappear and I removed my very dark eclipse glasses and there was the big corona. At the very first moments I could see a fire storm on the left upper part of periphery. There were bright orange dots surrounded by a beautiful magenta color. I saw this storm the previous night by the SOHO satellite linked to NASA's webpage. I'm looking for close-up photos of this because it's this eclipse's most interesting feature.

 

[lpetrich]

I saw it.

I prepared in advance by getting some eclipse glasses some weeks before, but then I saw warnings about how some of them were fakes. I decided that they might still be useful -- if one does not look too long through them. Just like with looking at the Sun in general -- it makes afterimages. I also punched holes in some paper plates so I could use them as pinhole cameras.

Earlier today, I put the glasses, some books, some paper, my digital camera, my cellphone, and some other stuff into a bag and took a folding chair with me to my house's front yard.

The sky was clear, with only a few wispy clouds near the horizon, and the time was 9:10 am PDT. I was just in time to see the entering partial phase begin. I used the eclipse glasses, careful to look only briefly, but the Sun through them was dark orange. It looked like it had a small bite out of it at 1 o'clock.

I watched for about an hour as the entering phase continued, and the bit expanded and became noticeably circular.

By 10 am, it was still noticeably daylight, but not as bright, and the Sun looked like a crescent. Both with my eclipse glasses and with my paper-plate pinhole camera. The leaves of a nearby tree also made a nice pinhole-camera effect. The paper-plate pinhole image was not as relatively faint as it had early been, and I could easily see my cellphone's display when I shade it. Earlier, shading it could make it only borderline visible.

I very briefly looked at the Sun around then, and while it was still bright, it did not make an afterimage.

By 10:14 am, my surroundings were noticeably dark, even with a daylight pattern of illumination, and the Sun was now a sliver at 7 o'clock.

I decided that it was safe to look at the Sun, and it looks like a bright spot on a ring -- the diamond-ring effect. When the "diamond" faded, then at 10:17 am, ...

TOTALITY. The Sun looked like a black disk with a thick white ring around it. The disk being the Moon and the ring being the corona. The sky looked as dark as dark twilight, even if not as dark as late night.

It lasted for a few minutes, and I got some pictures of it. Then I saw the diamond-ring effect again, and I knew that it was no longer safe to look directly at the Sun.

I stuck around for the remainder of the eclipse, the exiting partial phase, watching it as it happened. The Sun appeared on the opposite side of the Moon, at 1 o'clock, and as the eclipse ended at around 11:30 am, the Moon was at 7 o'clock. I then returned to my house with my bag and folding chair.

I live in Lebanon, OR, and here are some pictures of totality there.
http://lpetrich.org/Science/Pix/Total Eclipse of the Sun -- 2017-08-21 10.18.52.jpg
http://lpetrich.org/Science/Pix/Total Eclipse of the Sun -- 2017-08-21 10.19.16.jpg

I turned them into links because I did not want them to be attachments.

 

[Stavros Kiri]

At the very first moments I could see a fire storm on the left upper part of periphery.

It's called the "Diamond Ring" ... for obvious reasons. Then the Corona follows. It's all very amazing and magical, I agree!
[Then again on the moon going away part, mutatis mutandis*, Corona → Diamond Ring → 1st Crescent etc. ...]
(*In a similar manner)

 

[jtbell]

Awesome! Mind if I share these outside PF?

Sure, go ahead!

I had second thoughts about the shot of the eclipse and the building, so I re-processed it to make it darker. Now it looks a bit darker than does in Photoshop, but that may simply be because of the differing contrast with the light background here and the black background in PS.

Last night I watched the live TV coverage of the eclipse on our CBS and NBC stations, which I had set my DVR to record. As the light dwindled towards totality, what they recorded of the surroundings (not the sun itself) doesn't really resemble reality. It's probably because of the automatic exposure control on their cameras which boosted the brightness to compensate for the increasing darkness. Of course, our eyes were doing something similar, but the perceived results were different. My crowd shot a few minutes before totality doesn't do the scene justice, either.

None of them IMHO got a good image of the sun during totality, as seen from the ground, in context with the surroundings. Not too surprising since few if any TV camera crews have experience with this sort of thing. The raw version of my picture doesn't look very impressive either, almost flat black with the corona ring in the upper corner.

One of the commentators noticed something interesting. As the sunlight dwindled near totality, shadows became sharper. This makes sense because the visible portion of the sun was more nearly a point source than normal, so the penumbra at the edge of a shadow became narrower.

 

[lpetrich]

I had second thoughts about the shot of the eclipse and the building, so I re-processed it to make it darker. Now it looks a bit darker than does in Photoshop, but that may simply be because of the differing contrast with the light background here and the black background in PS.

My own pictures were taken with a point-and-shoot digital camera, and the Sun's corona got overexposed. It also made the twilight somewhat brighter. I was annoyed that the Sun didn't come out too well, but I decided to enjoy totality rather than experiment with the camera's settings.

Last night I watched the live TV coverage of the eclipse on our CBS and NBC stations, which I had set my DVR to record. As the light dwindled towards totality, what they recorded of the surroundings (not the sun itself) doesn't really resemble reality. It's probably because of the automatic exposure control on their cameras which boosted the brightness to compensate for the increasing darkness. Of course, our eyes were doing something similar, but the perceived results were different. My crowd shot a few minutes before totality doesn't do the scene justice, either.

Much the same thing happened with my camera, as I took pictures of my house's walls, to capture the tree-left pinhole-camera effect.

 

[nsaspook]

View attachment 209471
Zero luck on the "shadow bands". But I do have a 5 minute long video of a white sheet getting dark, and then light again, if anyone is interested. (I had a spare old camera)

I post-processed some video of a newly asphalted parking lot during the 99% phase in Gresham Oregon at work for 'shadow bands". On the original video the effect is very faint and not much better here.

 

[Borg]

Half an hour before totality, there wasn't a cloud for 30 or 40 degrees from the sun. Fifteen minutes later, a large clould appeared right on top of it. Five minutes before totality, the clould completely disappeared and we got our show!


I haven't done a lot of manual photography so I had focusing issues.

Here is one with my homemade telescope (8 inch Newtonian).

After a few shots, I used a 300 mm lens and caught the diamond.

 

[russ_watters]

Totality; Composite of six exposures, combined in Photomatix; 1/64", 1/32", 1/16", 1/4", 1/2", 1.6"
Orion ED80 (80x600mm), Canon EOS T3i:

With Earth'shine, 4sec (added in Photoshop):

https://www.facebook.com/russ.watters/posts/10154808060364249?pnref=story

 

[George Jones]

My, daughter, and I, and my friend and his daughter, saw the eclipse from the field at Butte Creek Elementary School in Oregon.

Spectacular!

 

[OmCheeto]

Cool video:



With an explanation:
https://www.facebook.com/NWSPortlan...RvNrl1MN7B5uXVTj5ihPt8iC9VKm8AkQMSurs&fref=nf

US National Weather Service Portland Oregon

10 hrs ·
So cool! Cumulus clouds develop when the ground warms and air rises. During the #Eclipse2017, the warming stopped and the cumulus clouds disappeared in the SE United States, only to return again an hour later as surface heating resumed.​

Peculiar meteorological things were going on where I was too. (Micro novel in the process. Title so far; "City Slicker goes to see an eclipse, from a Ranch. Ehr Mehr Gerd...")

In any event, I'm glad that so many people got to see totality.
As those eclipse geeks said; "It ranks a 1000, on a scale of 1 to 10".
No camera can capture this, IMHO.

 

[anorlunda]

At the very first moments I could see a fire storm on the left upper part of periphery. There were bright orange dots surrounded by a beautiful magenta color.

It's called the "Diamond Ring" ... for obvious reasons.

I think the diamond ring is what is shown in image 2 of post #137. I think the fire storms are what my neighbor caught in this shot below. I love the colors, but I can't decide if they are pink or orange. I also don't know which side is up in this image. I also feel sorry for my neighbor, he concentrated so much getting these max zoomed images that he never saw the corona.

I wanted to see the shadow approaching at high speed. I had a view to the west. I could also see white cumulus clouds to the west and I thought that I might see the cloud pass those before it got to me. But alas, at the crucial moment, I forgot all that and looked up. I need several reruns so that I can experience it looking in all possible ways. By the time 2024 comes, if I'm still here I'll probably be to blind and feeble to see it. :-)

I heard about another neighbor who got a 360 degree panorama from a boat on the lake. He said that it looked like sunset but without the asymmetry in the direction of the setting sun. I'm trying to get a copy of that panorama to post here.

p.s. Traveling today through Kentucky and Missouri. Thick clouds and rain came in this morning. If that had happened yesterday, it would have been a massive disappointment. I'm glad that nearly everyone had clear skies for the event.

 

[Janus]

A couple of the shots I was able to get. The partial eclipse shots were a bit tricky as I didn't opt to purchase a solar filter for my camera, but instead just placed my viewing glasses in front of the lens. This was particularly hard as the pair I used where not the flat cardboard type, but were like actual glasses with curved lens pieces. If they were held just exactly right, you got nothing. only a couple came out even reasonably well.

 

[OmCheeto]

...I forgot all that and looked up...

This was kind of my "take away" from the last two years of listening to veterans of eclipses; "When in doubt, just stare at it. Do NOT mess with your camera."

I think I lost about 15 seconds of staring time, fiddling with my camera.

ps. Ehr mehr gerd.
pps. I need to renew my passport. 7 years is not that far away.
ppps. I confirmed with the "more telescopes than god" guy, that I did indeed see the Milky Way, Sunday night. He says he doesn't post his images, but would email all of his pictures. He warned me that they were "HUGE!" images. I told him I had a nearly empty hard drive, so "Bring it on!"

pppps. BTW, not pictures of the Milky Way, but pictures of the eclipse.
ppppps. Now I know why I don't remember the Milky Way. It looks too much like nightly cloud cover where I'm at. But, I burned that image into my brain.

 

[anorlunda]

@OmCheeto , how did the travels to/from the event, and the crowding in Oregon turn out?

 

[Janus]

Forgot to add this one my wife took of me trying to line up the camera to take the total eclipse photo.

In the upper left corner, you can see some of the fog that was to the West of us. It threatened to blow in a couple of times but held off.

 

[russ_watters]

This was kind of my "take away" from the last two years of listening to veterans of eclipses; "When in doubt, just stare at it. Do NOT mess with your camera."

In my research, I found a wonderful program called Eclipse Orchestrator, which automated the imaging completely. I only had to touch the camera for a mid eclipse focus check and occasional recentering of the telescope (And yank off the filters when prompted).

Unfortunately that didn't work for my astrocam, so i wrote a couple of scripts in Maximdl, one for partial and one for totality. I just had to hit "start" at the appropriate time.

 

[anorlunda]

Wow. This is fun.
https://www.facebook.com/NWSBoulder...duY1kzux6CRgOKtX3B-yOtJ62jdGoFw4LG0dk&fref=nf

 

[OmCheeto]

@OmCheeto , how did the travels to/from the event, and the crowding in Oregon turn out?

I can only describe the second of the "two trips" as "serendipitous".

[on topic]
The pretty much "zero" traffic for the 200 mile drive to my eclipse site, starting at 2 pm on Sunday, was a great relief.
[/on topic]

[off topic]
The "for most people" nightmarish trip back, was a complete, and utter delight. Driving at 3 miles per hour, for 2 hours, through the canyons of Central Oregon, made me want to move there.
[/off topic]

 

[OmCheeto]

Forgot to add this one my wife took of me trying to line up the camera to take the total eclipse photo.View attachment 209521
In the upper left corner, you can see some of the fog that was to the West of us. It threatened to blow in a couple of times but held off.

I am willing to pay $50 for a full sized (8½ x 11 glossy) print of that image.

 

[Borg]

This was my simple setup in South Carolina.

Here is the beast that almost ruined my viewing ten minutes before totality. Hard to believe that it completely evaporated in 10 minutes.

My wife had to stay behind in northern VA but she had glasses with her. I didn't expect her to get any decent pictures but she is pretty resourceful. Who needs solar filters when you have just the right amount of water for a filter?

 

[lpetrich]

This was kind of my "take away" from the last two years of listening to veterans of eclipses; "When in doubt, just stare at it. Do NOT mess with your camera."

Essentially what I did. I was a bit annoyed that the Sun's corona looked too thick. But then again, I used a mass-market point-and-shoot digital camera. I would have to have experimented with its settings to try to get a better shot, but I didn't bother.

 

[anorlunda]

Here is the beast that almost ruined my viewing ten minutes before totality. Hard to believe that it completely evaporated in 10 minutes.

OMG I would have been tearing my hair out at that point. I actually had a dream the night before that a little black cloud would come along at just the wrong time to spoil my view.

Glad that it cleared up for you.

 

[UsableThought]

With Earth'shine

Nice. Is the blueish coloration an artifact of processing, or in some sense real?

 

[anorlunda]

Nice. Is the blueish coloration an artifact of processing, or in some sense real?

Wow, visual effects abound. During lunar eclipses, the moon looks red. It is illuminated by the annular red sunrise /sunset light from Earth's atmosphere. During a solar eclipse, the moon should show a reflection of the big blue marble. Can that be correct?

 

[Borg]

OMG I would have been tearing my hair out at that point.

Yes, I was definitely tearing out my hair and thinking whether I could throw my equipment into the back of a truck and race after a clear spot in two minutes. Fortunately, patience and a little luck won out.