Eclipse Time!

[LightWolf]

Who's watching/watched?

[Tunnelcat]

THAT was THEE coolest thing I've ever seen! Those couple of minutes of total darkness with only a ring of sun showing were worth it. I've seen one partial eclipse in my lifetime and that was back in 1979. This one was waaaay more interesting. Where I was standing this time, the sun was totally obscured. That crescent of sun that shows up as it's being eclipsed is cool, but when darkness suddenly fell, and it happened fast, you could look up without those special glasses and actually see the solar corona in all it's glory with your naked eyes. White lines of solar radiation spraying out like a white fan, some areas brighter than others. Just as cool were these shimmering shadows on the ground that occurred just as the sun was being covered and uncovered. It almost looked like those shadows that heat waves make, only in low light. Even the wind died, the temperature dropped 5 degrees and the birds went quiet, except for some stupid turkeys that started up in a gobble fest like they thought it was evening.

[LightWolf]

except for some stupid turkeys that started up in a gobble fest like they thought it was evening.

LOL

Where were you at? I ended up near Douglas, WY.

[Tunnelcat]

Corvallis, Oregon. Grendel should've seen it because he lives here as well. We weren't quite in the exact middle of the shadow, but it was close enough to get the show of the lifetime. I just wish I'd had a better camera though. I tried taking a picture at full totality with my tablet, but all I got was an orange blurry ball of light, not all that nice detail of the corona. There were quite a few aircraft flying around too. Somebody must have had some money however. They were circling around in a small corporate jet.

We were technically one of the first places to see it in Oregon. The coast was socked in with a morning marine cloud layer so they didn't luck out. Tsk, tsk.

[LightWolf]

Man the traffic is terrible... Good thing I'm not driving

[Tunnelcat]

Interstate 5 near Woodburn, Oregon, after the eclipse. Glad I'm not driving either.

[LightWolf]

I'm guessing it was that in every single highway, side street, and Taco John's like I experienced?

[Grendel]

Corvallis, Oregon. Grendel should've seen it because he lives here as well. We weren't quite in the exact middle of the shadow, but it was close enough to get the show of the lifetime. I just wish I'd had a better camera though. I tried taking a picture at full totality with my tablet, but all I got was an orange blurry ball of light, not all that nice detail of the corona. There were quite a few aircraft flying around too. Somebody must have had some money however. They were circling around in a small corporate jet.

I watched it from my back yard, truly awesome ! Screwed the 1st picture up, but it does give a good impression how it looked like (incl. the damn contrail...) The other two were taken w/ a longer lens shortly after that.

[Sirius]

That is pretty cool, yeah. Up here we got - I think I heard 94% totality, which was good enough for "crescent sun" and it was obviously dimmer and cooler than it normally would have been at that time of day, but it was still just a matter of degrees.

Funny enough, seeing Corvallis in the path my first thought was "well TC is going to get a great view"

[Top Gun]

Damn, now I'm really wishing I'd attempted the 12-hour drive. We got about 75% in my neck of the woods, but even that was enough to make everything noticeably dimmer. I was stuck rocking a good ol' pinhole projector.

[Krom]

Saw a whole 2 minutes and 30 seconds of total from where I went, was amazing.

[Tunnelcat]

Corvallis, Oregon. Grendel should've seen it because he lives here as well. We weren't quite in the exact middle of the shadow, but it was close enough to get the show of the lifetime. I just wish I'd had a better camera though. I tried taking a picture at full totality with my tablet, but all I got was an orange blurry ball of light, not all that nice detail of the corona. There were quite a few aircraft flying around too. Somebody must have had some money however. They were circling around in a small corporate jet.

I watched it from my back yard, truly awesome ! Screwed the 1st picture up, but it does give a good impression how it looked like (incl. the damn contrail...) The other two were taken w/ a longer lens shortly after that.

Your first picture is what I got with my tablet, a yellowish blurry ball. I do own an expensive Minolta camera, but it's now obsolete because it's a film camera and Minolta is no longer around to make a digital body compatible with all the nice sets of lenses that I own for it. Maybe I'll look into getting it converted somehow because it's the lenses that are the most expensive part the investment.

That is pretty cool, yeah. Up here we got - I think I heard 94% totality, which was good enough for "crescent sun" and it was obviously dimmer and cooler than it normally would have been at that time of day, but it was still just a matter of degrees.

Funny enough, seeing Corvallis in the path my first thought was "well TC is going to get a great view"

Oh, there was no part of this eclipse that was as spectacular as when the sun was fully covered by the moon. That's the golden moment. Even a sliver of sun remaining doesn't compare. Once the moon had completely covered the sun, it went pitch black outside, so dark my motion activated porch lights fired up and I had to race over and kill the power. I could take off my cheap solar glasses and actually view the corona with my naked eyes. I was awestruck. I quickly grabbed a pair of binoculars before the sun peeked out again and I could actually see a small solar flare arching out to one side. Gawd!

[Grendel]

Your first picture is what I got with my tablet, a yellowish blurry ball. I do own an expensive Minolta camera, but it's now obsolete because it's a film camera and Minolta is no longer around to make a digital body compatible with all the nice sets of lenses that I own for it. Maybe I'll look into getting it converted somehow because it's the lenses that are the most expensive part the investment.

They were taken w/ the same body, just different glass -- 16mm on the blurry one, 200mm on the others (full frame sensor.) Either the AF didn't work or (more likely) the exposure got too long (handheld.) The good ones are from a tripod.

Check out the mainstream mounts (Canon, Nikon, Fuji, MFT), they pick the one that offers a mount adapter for your Minolta glass (micro four third probably does) and get an appropriate body. It will be cheaper and more future proof than messing w/ the Minolta body.

[Tunnelcat]

Hmm, you got me looking into this one Grendel. It appears that Minolta merged with Konica and soon after they dropped their DLSR camera line of products, which was then taken over by Sony. The Minolta Maxxim line of lenses will apparently fit without an adapter on any Sony Alpha line of Digital cameras. Now I wonder, does Sony even make a decent digital camera body to begin with?

[Krom]

So the little spot we found in far southern Illinois turned out to be a good one, although the traffic home that evening was terrible. The partial eclipse started around 11:50 local time where we were, the total eclipse started at about 1:18. So of course some clouds started puffing up around 11:30, there was actually a cloud obscuring the sun less than a minute before the total eclipse start, but thankfully since the suns energy was all but blotted out at that time and the cloud immediately dissipated leaving us a totally clear sky to see the two "diamond rings". The lead up to the eclipse was some of the more bizarre weather I've ever seen. All the birds/animals and bugs started doing their night time routines and sounds, the heat index (over 100) dropped rapidly as the crescent shrank and it even rained from a clear sky. As the crescent shrank, all the shadows cast in the sunlight got sharper because the visible sun was changing from a diffuse source to a point source of light, leading to unusually well defined shadows along one axis. The nearby street lights also came on, and I could see a couple of the brighter stars and planets during the total.

We did get a few pictures of it with my brothers DSLR, but as expected none of them capture the overall experience and how surreal and dark it gets due to differences in camera exposure. Auto-focus is also hit and miss at best and only if there is a cloud in the frame, it is basically impossible to photograph like you can see in person, everything works against cameras.

[Tunnelcat]

I've heard people say that an eclipse is nothing that special, but I'm guessing that they've only seen a partial eclipse. But IMHO, nothing compares to the visuals of a total eclipse after having seen my first one with my own eyes. It's one of the most fantastic things I've ever seen in the sky.

[Krom]

Yeah, a partial is an interesting thing to see, but not worth traveling for. A total is a whole different experience and definitely worth a day trip or two.

We were listening to the news and heard someone say "95% is good enough" and immediately we all said "famous quotes by people who haven't seen a total solar eclipse".