Eclipse

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Anybody here going to be in its path on April 8th?

It passes right over my apartment, so no travelling necessary except to go out into the car park Weather forecast for the area (North Arkansas) was saying mostly cloudy, but has changed to "high clouds" and they're saying that means it should be visible.

Downside is that there's bound to be a bum-rush into the region. Wal-Mart was suspiciously out of stock on quite a few groceries yesterday, don't know whether that's related.

I'm wondering whether it's worth my while trying to take a photo. My plan is to stick the lens from a pair of eclipse sunglasses over the camera lens and just point it up at the sky and press the shutter. I suppose it'll be a poor photo because it's not a great camera, I have no tripod here, and as the Sun is so "small" (so to speak) that it won't be much better than my photos of the Moon usually are.

I'm in nw ohio but i have to work.

No, I live clear across the country and I've already seen two. Perhaps the next time there's an eclipse I'll travel for it.

I definitely recommend that folks with the ability to see one do so. I personally think that annular eclipses are better, but total eclipses are less common and are in some respects more impressive.

Everybody that goes just needs to make sure to have NSF certified eclipse glasses if they want to observe the eclipse directly.

I am going to see it.

I'm still hoping the clouds won't spoil things too much. Forecast has changed from "high clouds" to "partly cloudy." They're still insinuating it'll be "great weather for the eclipse," but I'm taking that with a pinch of salt. Eclipse tourism is something of a cash cow, so they might just be trying to whack up the market. But I think there's still a realistic chance that it'll be visible, and I've got my eclipse sunglasses ready and have mapped out the areas that won't be in shadow.

I was hoping to see the shadow of the eclipse racing towards and/or away from me along the ground, but apparently it travels at over 1000 mph and the horizons here are too nearby for me to expect to see that. In theory I could head for the top of a nearby mountain but don't want to get stuck in traffic if the bum rush causes a gridlock.

Well, it's all over here, more or less. Very few clouds, so it was quite good.

I was rather disappointed to find that during totality, eclipse sunglasses show nothing at all. They only show the partials. I wish they'd warned me about that. So I took a very brief look with the naked eye and wished I'd had a safe way of looking longer, because it was pretty impressive.

By cutting out one of the lenses of a pair of eclipse glasses and sticking it over my camera lens, I was able to get a few passable shots of the partials, though most of them were ruined by camera shake because of the necessary high zoom level, and by artifacts from the cheap camera optics. And of course, no shot of the total eclipse except one without the eclipse lens, and that's very poor. Still, overall the photos are better than I expected. Nothing like as good as NASA, but they're mine, and very likely better than most of the shots other folks were taking. Nerdiness wins again.

I'm just going to wait until tonight and go out when it is darker.

The best suggestion I heard was to buy a bunch of blow-up dolls, fill them with helium, and release them during totality.

Make everyone think that the rapture has begun and they are being "left behind".

Hi, I wasn't in the path of totality, rather, I was in the path of the partial eclipse. Only 85% of the sun was covered up a few hours ago. However, it's been 30 years since I witnessed an annular eclipse. Yes, the sun was completely covered up and I would like to see that again one day.

During the event, I went outside and enjoyed the eclipse with a pinhole projector, shared some glasses and looked at the shapes on the ground by the trees.

Does anyone remember the solar eclipse in 1979?
I was home from school.
It was really amazing.

^
No, that one missed the UK completely and I was in the UK at the time. The news didn't cover it. There was one that touched the south of England in 1999, but it was only a partial where I was. My son was in the south at the time and vaguely remembers seeing it, but I gather the totality was clouded out over most of its path, so maybe there wasn't much to see. I distinctly remember seeing the partial with a home-made pinhole camera, and crescent-shaped shadows of tree foliage.

I was in the area where the eclipse was to be 90%, which I consider pretty good. But it was very cloudy and I saw nothing at all. It wasn't even noticeably dimmer outside because the heavy clouds were already making it pretty dim. I had my eclipse glasses ready and everything. I was pretty disappointed.