YCGL - Day 9 - Monday, April 8, 2024 - Eclipse Day - It was the Best of Times, It was the ..... well, you get the photo....

OK, it has been predicted clouds and rain for the past 10 days.  As we got closer, the rain was predicted a little later, after 2:00.  And to be honest, the rain we had was a few sprinkles and that was it.  However, it's been cloudy all day long, sometimes thick, sometimes thin enough to create what astronomers call suckerholes.  Holes in the clouds just big enough to get a person excited enough to view something, but closing in before you can actually get to the eyepiece.  We sat and looked at glowing clouds without our solar glasses much more than we actually peered through them.  

But peer we did.  I spent more time getting the telescope set up for people to view than I did with my safe solar viewing boxes, so I didn't take any pictures during the first half of the eclipse, but I took a lot more during the second half.  As for seeing the corona or the diamond ring, not a chance, but did get some slivers just before and just after totality.  Which was dark enough to turn on the street light we were sitting under.  

I wanted to get these up on line as quickly as possible, I'll do a better job of arranging them later tonight.  They are currently in reverse order, except the last two (now fixed).  See you later tonight.  Time for Taco Salad with Carol and Pete.  

I will keep this as the first shot, because it matches the first shot of yesterday's blog.  It's fuzzy because because of the cloud cover.  When we had a clear shot of the sun, the image was much cleaner and you could see the sunspots.

This was my setup.  The two boxes gave a 6" diameter image and the smaller one a 4" diameter image.  I had the pipe fittings set up to aim to the north pole so that most of the movement was just in right ascension, not in declination, meaning it tracked the sun fairly closely by just turning it on one axis.  I kept up with the smaller one more than the larger, but mainly worked the telescope which was on the tripod between and behind the boxes. 

But, this is what we were looking at most of the time.  This was an hour before the eclipse started.

My telescope table solar eyeglasses, my solar viewers made out of 2-#12 welding glasses and a colander.  The colander was too cheap, the holes weren't very round and the general haze prevented seeing the cool effect that you can get, a large circle of small eclipses.  I'll have to see if i can find one. Each of the holes in the colander becomes a pinhole camera and shows the eclipse.

 

This is the best picture I took about 15 minutes before totality.  I was really focused (!) on getting the telescope aligned in the suckerholes, and didn't think much about taking pictures before hand.  Remember to left-click on the pictures to get a larger image.  

 Time=1:28

This was during totality.  About a minute into totality, a street light right across the street from us turned on.  It kind of ruined the effect.  However, you can see how dark it is back  out in the trees.  

Time=1:31

Time=1:36

Time=1:37

Time=1:38

Time=1:41

Time=1:41

Time=1:41

Time=2:04

Photo taken through a pair of eclipse eyeglass.  There wasn't much to see after this point.  

I thought this shirt was very appropriate for the eclipse.  

I may have worn it in 2017 as well.

I'll probably wear it in 2033.

And so ends the eclipse viewing of 2024.  Was it a disappointment?  Yes and no.  It would have been nice to have all three hours of pristine sky.  As it was, we had to appreciate every suckerhole we got.  My next door trailer neighbor had a video of a hole opening up and then closing again in about 15 seconds.  So it forced us to continue to observe and call out openings.  And if the skies had been clear, I wouldn't have gotten any of the pictures that I did.  Instead, these are pretty dramatic.  Which is neat.  Of course, the street light coming on was adding insult to injury, but that was interesting also.  

The bottom line, would I do it again?  And the answer is yes.  This still doesn't discourage me from doing the next one.  And there are plenty of eclipses around the world to see before the next ones here in 2033 and 2044.  And maybe I'll still see one of those.  We'll see.....