I tried to get photos of the eclipse today, but even with a special app, my phone just couldn't handle it. Pity. I should at least have gotten a nice crescent out of it, even though I'm too far away from the center of the action. The sky darkened here a little, but not a lot; it looked like it was just cloudy even though it's only hazy at most.
For my money the annular eclipse of '94 was so much better. The path of greatest eclipse passed right over us and even though it was cloudy that day, I got to see quite a bit of it, including watching the moon slowly gobble up the sun.
The good news is, the 2024 eclipse should pass very very close to me, so assuming I'm able to get a few dozen miles north or west that day, I should be able to see that one. Of course it's in April, so the weather will be a complete crap shoot.
ID:2285685
 Aug 21 2017, 12:03 pm
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My scout troop watched the solar eclipse today. The normal meetings are on Mondays, so it was just a matter of setting the start time earlier than normal.
We turned the eclipse into an astronomy science fair sort of deal: Moon phases, myths/legends, eclipse modeling, animal behavior changes, Arthur Eddington’s 1919 experiment, personal pinhole projector building, pinhole kaleidoscopes, and recording temperatures and solar output data (solar panel with a voltmeter wired on it) before, during, and after the eclipse. I had made a larger pinhole projector that the whole group could gather around and watch, we had about 75% coverage at peak, and here’s the shot:  The weather was great, and the "tinted" appearance of everything was the best part for me. One of the leaders managed to snag a pair of solar glasses about a half hour after we had hit peak (none of us had glasses prior to then), so that was an unexpected surprise to round out the day. | |
Saw the total eclipse. Everything was dark for about 2 minutes. It was just a black circle with a thin white ring around it - when it got to that point we just took our glasses off until it started to move off again. Honestly it was pretty underwhelming, the only thing impressive about it is the fact that it's rare but I was expecting more due to all the hype. Like I'd be more excited seeing a tornado or a lion or something as opposed to a white circle in the sky but whatever. I would've never traveled from another country to come see that, hard to believe people were making reservations and shit from other countries and states to come view it.
Took pictures but the quality is even worse than Higoten's so there's no point in posting them. But yeah, I can say I witnessed the total solar eclipse of 2017 but I was bored for those 2 minutes. When I was little I saw a shooting star though - now THAT was impressive. | |
Watched full totality, got a little blubbery. Was actually one of the most epic and awesome things I've ever witnessed in my life. Pretty amazing.
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I got off work early due to it, and went right back to bed.
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I tried to, but now I can't see anything.
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Yes I was in the 98% zone. The sky darkened about 60%, the clouds turned orange. Jupiter shown brightly in the sky. Pretty nice.
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I drove down to Nashville TN from Gettysburg PA to see the eclipse with my friend. We lucked into getting into the baseball field event because we happened to ask an officer what was up by chance. Turns out the guy had 4 free tickets to the event he was waiting to hand out.
It was alright I guess. I was mostly there for the ride. I used the last $120 I had to my name at the time to get down there and back. We did stop at some bars for karaoke, but hit the liquor store for the booze. | |
But most of my day was filled with people calling >2 hours after the eclipse had started: "Are you guys giving away solar eclipse glasses?".
Every single store in the area sold out months in advance, online stores started charging $5,000 a pair a week before the event started. Seriously. You are gonna wait until 2 hours after the eclipse began to find you a pair? I hope each of these people decided to stare at the eclipse without eye protection. At least then their eyesight and their foresight would be equal.
I was in elementary school when the '94 annular eclipse passed over the US. I lived in an ideal area to view it at the time. I remember we built these horrible shadow boxes so we could see it. Nobody showed us how to use them. They were just like: "These will allow you to see the eclipse!" Needless to say, there were many first graders looking straight at the sun through the holes in their shadow boxes on that playground that day.