As many of you know, I’ve taken a hiatus from WUWT for almost two months, and I offer my humble thanks to the many people that contributed of themselves to allow that to happen. I’ll be back at the helm soon, but for now, I wanted to share this video. Charles the Moderator (CTM) joined me in the desert wilderness of Eastern Oregon to experience the eclipse together….and we did. We set posts to publish ahead, and left the grid…it was the first time since the mid 90’s that I’ve been without Internet access for 3 days straight.
I prepped for months. Three cameras. Tracking mount. There’s no way to practice for this, all you can do is make best guesses. One of my guesses turned out OK. Not perfect, but I’ll fix it in post.
As for the total eclipse, it was the most incredible experience I’ve ever had – an intersection of science, technology, photography, art, and history. Literally, it was jaw dropping as I stood there gazing at the corona in awe. I saw the annular eclipse in 2012 – this was orders of magnitude beyond that experience. Here are some stills from the video.
And, at the end of the day, driving back on Highway 395, the sun gave us a second show, complete with crepuscular rays.
The place we were at, Deep Creek Campground in Ochoco National Forest, was not crowded at all. In fact, we avoided all the traffic, the gas lines, and the crowds. We were by ourselves – blissful solitude.
All for now. I’m zorched.
P.S. I apologize for leaving you all stuck with NASA TV while we were gone. I hear it was even worse than you’d expect…talking heads, inanity, small split screens….
UPDATE: Here’s another photo taken with a different camera (Nikon D1500 D7500). The exposure is reduced, and you can see prominences on the edge of the sun….these are magnetic field lines that are causing hot gas eruptions from the sun’s photosphere. Click to enlarge.
We got only a partial eclipse here in Houston. But I got a thin piece of cardboard and enjoyed the partial anyhow. With a follow-on of an almost famous hamburger from Millers. And a root beer. Great.
Forgot to mention the step of punching a small hole in the cardboard.
It’a amazing how large the shadow appears while crossing North America. I wish they had slowed it down a bit though, but you can pause it…:
Cheered and heartened by all of the eclipse adventures related here!
My own adventure started Sunday afternoon, just south of Seattle. I loaded a cooler of milk, cheese, sausage, crackers, beer, and ice into my pickup truck, topped up the fuel tank and lashed down a 5 gallon ‘reserve’ gas can, tossed my sleeping bag and a rolled up foam pad into the cab, and headed for Madras OR. I90 and Hwy 97 led me down to Madras, +300 miles later. I found a quiet backroad (NE Loukes Rd) just NE of Madras, with a safe ‘pull off’ area, rolled out my pad and sleeping bag in the truck bed, and let the crickets sing me to sleep at 1am. When I awakened at 6:30am, a quick sortie found a great viewing spot less than a half mile east… and no one else within sight, so I set up there and settled back into my bed roll for a ‘power’ nap. This is a rolling hills rural area, with chickens crowing and cows lowing in the background – just my style!
The eclipse started at about 9:06am. I was using a welder lens to monitor progress visually (while laying on my sleeping bag) and having fun using one side of my binoculars as a ‘pinhole camera’ to project the occluding sun image on the side of my truck. By 9:50 it was at ~ 50%, with the air temp dropping enough I put my sweatshirt back on! At 10:08, it was ~ 75% and the local chickens were making ‘broody’ calls. By 10:15 it was ~ 90% occluded, twilight and dimming, the chickens were calling ‘roost’ and horses were uneasily wickering in the distance. Totality hit at ~ 10:19 and lasted for 2 minutes. I watched the last few seconds before totality and most of the full eclipse through my binoculars – It was Awesome! Very, very ‘cool’ to see the solar aurora, prominences, and implied magnetic fields through binoculars during totality. I attempted a few pictures and a video with both a tripod mounted camera and my cell phone… but neither came close to the detail level I could see with my Nikon 10 x 50 binocs! For those two minutes, I was completely entranced! I get ‘goose bumps’, just thinking about it now!
Was it worth 600 miles of driving, short sleep, and ‘roughing it’? You damn betcha!!!
Really liked the last photo enlarged which showed the sun’s photosphere and the corona. I hope you post more photos of your excellent adventure in the near future. Liked the “big” crowd at your campsite…JPP
Do you have any pics of when it got dark?
A few months ago I discovered that my father-in-law lives in the the path of totality, so I made a trip down there to see it with him – totally worth it! Weather teased us a bit with clouds early on, but it cleared out by the time of totality. 🙂
We went to a spot 23 miles ESE of Rexburg, ID. in the exact centerline of totality. We drove east out of Rexburg over Woods Crossing and followed Mud Springs road out past the farms to forest service road 218. It was an unimproved road and wilderness area which provided solitude.
We found a clearing at 6300 ft. elevation with an unimpeded view to the west. There we met an Entomologist from UC Riverside who was studying the insects and videotaping the landscape as the shadow raced towards us from the west.
We recorded a temperature drop of 30F from 78F at 10:15 AM to 48F at 11:35 AM. There was a beautiful 360 degree sunset along with an other worldly view of the Sun. It was an indescribable experience.
Stuck in the UK, I didn’t even get to see the small residual partial that occurred here shortly before sunset as it clouded over. I did watch some of the streamed NASA output early on, but I felt it really didn’t do justice to the wider scene – and it also buffered up from here. I wondered what my Stellarium (freeware) software would make of it, and found it does an amazing job – probably over-dramatising the visible starscape during totality. Just set it for a location in the path of totality, and run it from a few minutes before. Pause the time periodically, and pan around the sky.
I did happen on this story about capturing some stunning images:
https://www.dpreview.com/articles/5501288570/how-the-viral-climber-eclipse-photo-and-video-were-shot
Of course, it takes having the idea to begin with. Software again can be very helpful with doing the planning – you do have to work out the exact spot you need to be in, although you can confirm you have the alignment right a day in advance. This is what I would have used:
http://app.photoephemeris.com/?ll=44.371448,-121.146020¢er=44.3710,-121.1452&dt=20170821101300-0700&z=18&spn=0.00,0.01&sll=44.370524,-121.143446
Mr Espenak as always has advice on exposures:
http://www.mreclipse.com/SEphoto/SEphoto.html