2017 solar eclipse live from Casper

People from around the world continue to converge in my hometown of
Casper Wyoming to experience the solar eclipse of 2017. Approximately
two hundred and fifty private aircraft will land at the airport tomorrow
to view the eclipse from the tarmac.

Eclipse events gravitate around two venues. Astrocon 2017 takes place at
the Parkway Plaza Hotel Convention Centre. More about Astrocon in a
moment.

The Eclipse Festival takes place on a ten block stretch of 2nd Street,
which is closed to traffic for the duration, only cross traffic is
allowed. It's a block party that's ten blocks long and a couple of
blocks wide.

The block party was absolutely packed last night with humanity. Security
warned me to walk my bicycle because there simply wasn't enough room
between people to safely ride it. There was lots music, dancing,
drinking, and eating.

Jump Craze is a indoor trampoline park for kids and adults who act like
kids. It's my understanding that the entire floor consists of
trampolines of various sizes. You don't walk from room to room, you jump
from room to room. It saps all of a child's energy and leaves parents
with a quiet child afterward. Anyhow, Jump Craze was one of many
businesses who had a presence at the block party. They set up a mini
bungee cord apparatus for kids to jump around in.

There was lots of kids all over the place. It was definitely a family
event. Two gigantic checkerboards were set up in the street, one for
checkers and one for chess. This CBS Denver report gives you a daytime
view of the downtown Eclipse Festival:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5XzrBU3gY4

A scientific community gathers at Astrocon 2017. It's a convention with
the usual amenities: vendor displays and swag. This video shows you one
one of the vendor displays:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7WLdCa2Fd8

_Sky and Telescope_ offers the best swag. My take was
_Beautiful Universe, 2015 Edition_. It's a glossy magazine that contains
129 images.

The Meade company had a large presence, in more ways than one, at a
couple places. Indoors Meade filled at least two vendor booths with
telescopes and other astronomical paraphernalia. Outdoors they set up
a couple of telescopes on one huge AZ mount for public viewing.

A surprisingly small number of people took them up on their offer at any
given point in time. About a half a dozen people were in front of my
wife and me when we joined the viewing line. The two couples in front of
us spoke a foreign language, which sounded romantic, possibly Italian.

Seeing the Sun through a telescope for the first time was a treat! Both
telescopes were refractors. One of the scopes displayed relatively small
black sunspots on a white background. It looked similar to this:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/onlin...-july-17-2017/

The other scope was a Coronado SolarMax Hydrogen-alpha. It displayed a
red Sun en total, with relatively small solar prominences around the
perimeter. It looked similar to this still and video:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astro...o-thesunshine/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFZynuxB3Vk

An enigmatic soft mellifluous tenor voice filled the heavens of the
convention hall. The voice came out of a second floor room. Further
inspection revealed it to be the voice of Carl Sagan narrating the
"Encyclopaedia Galactica" episode of _Cosmos_. Carl spoke about Jean
Francois Champollion, who used the Rosetta stone to decrypt ancient
gyptian heiroglyphics. Carl's disembodied voice spoke to a room full of
empty chairs. Weird. It seems that everyone at Astrocon 2017, including
me, already saw that movie.

Thank you,

--
Don

A blue sky greets Casper at dawn. They say that there's smoke in the air
from Pacific Northwest forest fires, but you can't prove it by me.
Sometimes Summer forest fire smoke fills Casper's mid-level sky with
dark, smelly, angry, long clouds. During such times there's no doubt
whatsoever that the sky is indeed full of smoke. But, that's not the
case today.

At best, today's reported smoke looks like a virtually invisible haze. A
Denver meteorologist who's here for the eclipse says that the haze
actually enhances the Sun's coloration. Let's call the sky one notch
lower than the "severe clear" that often greets Casper in its high
desert climate. To paraphrase American Indian Chief Crazy Horse, "Today
is a good day to eclipse for all the things of the sky are present."

Thank you,

--
Don

On Mon, 21 Aug 2017 05:07:01 +0000, D B Davis wrote:

People from around the world continue to converge in my hometown of
Casper Wyoming to experience the solar eclipse of 2017. Approximately
two hundred and fifty private aircraft will land at the airport tomorrow
to view the eclipse from the tarmac.

I live in Nashville, TN, which was slightly off-center in the totality
zone. We had about two minutes of totality. I helped put on a free
festival, organized by three non-profit groups, that had live music,
speakers, and poets. The weather was mostly clear, and there weren't any
clouds in the way at totality. Ironically, an expensive eclipse party at
a stadium about three miles away had a cloud overhead at totality, while
our free festival had clear viewing.

There was not as much traffic congestion within the city itself as I had
expected, but apparently all of the Interstates leading out of the city
turned into parking lots after you had left the eclipse zone. My sister
had come from Richmond, Virginia, to Nashville, to see the eclipse, and
chose to take back roads going home, rather than the Interstate. Even so,
a normally-10-hour trip took about 13 hours.

John F. Eldredge:
I live in Nashville, TN, which was slightly off-center in the totality
zone. We had about two minutes of totality. I helped put on a free
festival, organized by three non-profit groups, that had live music,
speakers, and poets. The weather was mostly clear, and there weren't any
clouds in the way at totality. Ironically, an expensive eclipse party at
a stadium about three miles away had a cloud overhead at totality, while
our free festival had clear viewing.

There was not as much traffic congestion within the city itself as I had
expected, but apparently all of the Interstates leading out of the city
turned into parking lots after you had left the eclipse zone. My sister
had come from Richmond, Virginia, to Nashville, to see the eclipse, and
chose to take back roads going home, rather than the Interstate. Even so,
a normally-10-hour trip took about 13 hours.

My wife, my imaging partner, and I drove from near Annapolis, MD, to
Hendersonville. (Very nice town, that!) Weather was gorgeous, with no
significant clouds until the very last seconds of the eclipse, but
boiling hot--though maybe worse in Nashville. The Hyatt House in
Hendersonville has a nice grassy area adjacent to the parking lot in
front where we set up our 'scopes and cameras near the SUV that
contained our gear.

We thought we were being smart by not driving home until Tuesday. I-40
in Tennessee was a fast track, but I-81 in Virginia is among the worst
of the worst. Thanks to Lexus Enform we avoided the huge backup behind
a fatal accident (truck hit cars from behind, as usual). We detoured
through WVa to avoid the accident. Our 11-hour drive required nearly 16
hours.

But worth it! Thanks, Tennessee!

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm