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2017 solar eclipse live from Casper



 
 
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  #1  
Old August 21st 17, 06:07 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.written,sci.astro.amateur
D B Davis
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5
Default 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
  #2  
Old August 21st 17, 02:06 PM posted to rec.arts.sf.written,sci.astro.amateur
D B Davis
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5
Default 2017 solar eclipse live from Casper


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
  #3  
Old August 21st 17, 05:40 PM posted to rec.arts.sf.written,sci.astro.amateur
D B Davis
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5
Default 2017 solar eclipse live


Peter Trei wrote:
On Monday, August 21, 2017 at 9:10:56 AM UTC-4, D B Davis wrote:
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."


Sounds good! I'm about 400 miles out to sea, posting via satellite. The
ship has excellent wifi. We have some thin cloud, but I don't think it
will stop the viewing. Uncertainty about crowds on the top deck, and
the effect of the DNCE/ Bonnie Tyler concert is of some concern.


It's started here in Casper. The moon's occluding the upper right
perimeter of the Sun.

Rumor has it that there's at least one Saudi Sheikh in town with his
entourage. Someone also hit the jackpot after _National Geographic_
paid $40,000 to rent /that person's/ house for four days. Other news
crews from around the world also rented houses for amounts unknown to
me.

Thank you,

--
Don
  #4  
Old August 22nd 17, 02:46 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.written,sci.astro.amateur
D B Davis
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5
Default 2017 solar eclipse Casper valediction


At twenty minutes until totality it was finally time to stop watching
space.tv's live stream and make that five minute walk down the alley to
a nearby park. A park with a stocked pond that's wild enough for eagle
eyed birds of prey to slowly circle, crook their wings, dive down, and
pluck fish clean out of the water. Fishing's always good for both man
and bird.

One four lane highway is all that separates the pond in the park from
three hundred miles of wilderness that plunge South deep into Colorado.
Three hundred miles of bears, foxes, mountain lions, bobcats, and
wolves.

A few dozen people greeted us at the gravel parking area that marks the
end of the alley and the start of the park. A guitar was strummed while
kids ran around. My wife and I continued on foot across the pond dam to
a spot in the park that offers a patch of dark that's great for star
gazing amid a sea of house light pollution. The plan was to identify
the constellations that appeared during totality.

The temperature steadily dropped as the moon crept over the face of the
sun. It became easier to watch the landscape darken by the second. It
became a unique sort of twilight.

The piece of white paper carefully placed on the path never did show the
promised shadow bands. Then the Sun dramatically disappeared from sight.
Too fast for me to see the Baily's beads effect, or the Diamond ring
effect.

Off came my solar eclipse glasses and on came my corrective lenses. The
tears, goosebumps, and emotions that others experience never happened to
me. Instead my naked eyes stared down the Sun. It filled /me/ with a
supernatural sense of power. More about that in a moment.

Next came the surrealism. The eclipsed Sun was both the brightest thing
and the darkest thing that my naked eyes have ever seen. The whole park
became Daliesque in the style of "Starry, starry, night." [1]

A pink sunrise/sunset on the horizon normally encircles viewers during
totality. The pink sunrise/sunset was more pastel than expected.

The sky remained blue, too bright for the expected constellations to
appear. Finally a pinpoint of white is discerned in the blue sky. It's
Venus. There's another white pinpoint Southwest of it. It's Sirius.

My eyes vainly search the ecliptic for stars. My eyes eventually turn
North to seek out Ursa Major and see nothing. Time goes by far too fast
and a sliver of Sun suddenly appears to rob me of my ecliptic superpower
sight faster than Kryptonite smacks down Superman.

Lessons learned:

* Purchase hundreds of eclipse glasses beforehand to send to friends and
family who live outside of totality. Even a partial solar eclipse is a
mesmerizing sight to behold and they end up with a souvenir.

* Use stellarium software immediately beforehand to get the "lay of the
land."

* Forget about the shadow bands and focus on the Sun to catch a fleeting
glimpse of Baily's beads and the Diamond ring effects.

* Forget about the best spot to stargaze at night. It just doesn't
matter. Any spot will do.

Note.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHnRfhDmrk

Thank you,

--
Don
  #5  
Old August 25th 17, 11:59 PM posted to rec.arts.sf.written,sci.astro.amateur
Bice
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3
Default 2017 solar eclipse Casper valediction

On Tue, 22 Aug 2017 01:46:18 -0000 (UTC), D B Davis
wrote:

At twenty minutes until totality it was finally time to stop watching
space.tv's live stream and make that five minute walk down the alley to
a nearby park.


I'm mostly a lurker in this newsgroup (r.a.sf.w) and I know I'm a few
days late and a couple dollars short with this, but I've been
incredibly busy ever since the eclipse happened and I'm just now
getting caught up with my newsgroup reading. This gives me a chance
to tell my eclipse story one last time, because everyone I know in
real life is sick of hearing it. Feel free to skip this post before
you get sick of hearing it too.

When I first read about this eclipse a few years ago, I immediately
decided I was going to drive south (from PA) to see it. My daughter,
at the time, was pretty enthusiastic about going along, but as it
turned out the date of the eclipse ended up being two days before she
was supposed to start her first year of college, so she didn't want to
go. Fortunately my wife, who had to stay home because she couldn't
get out of work, talked her into going along as a last
dad-and-daughter bonding adventure before she went off to college and
adulthood. We had a great time - she decided she was going to perfect
a southern accent and spent the whole time in the car practicing it
and telling me all about her fictional family from the deep south.
She had me rolling with a story about an old family recipe for a soup
made out of goats that they call "Clippity Clippity soup". I don't
know where she comes up with stuff like that.

The day before the eclipse we drove pretty much all day to
Elizabethtown, KY, which was the closest I could find a reasonably
priced hotel room. The plan was to drive the next day to
Hopkinsville, KY, the site of maximum totality. But we saw on the
local news that Hopkinsville was a madhouse of tourists, so we changed
plans and just drove straight south until we hit the center line of
totality.

As we wound through backwoods of TN, we hit a road that was completely
closed due to blasting and had to detour and got a bit lost. We ended
up driving into a tiny little town called Carthage, TN. There was a
mom-and-pop burger joint that had a big sign out front that said "Free
Eclipse Parking", so we went there. The family that owned the place
was super friendly and invited us to hang out and watch the eclipse
with them. We had perfect weather (not a cloud in the sky), shaded
outdoor seating and a bathroom and air conditioning in the resturant.
We pretty much stumbled into the perfect place to view the eclipse.
As a way of thanking the owners we ate lunch there, and our hot dogs,
drinks and popsicles came out to around $10.

The two block "downtown" area was having an eclipse festival, because
I think they thought they were going to get a lot more tourists than
they did. In fact, I'm amazed they DIDN'T get more tourists, because
this town couldn't have been more than a mile off the center line of
totality. We met one guy from New York who had picked the town
randomly on a map, and I'm pretty sure he was the only other non-local
there. In order to be good tourists, we bought some lemonade and a
few t-shirts - two Dark Side of the Moon-themed shirts that the local
high school marching band was selling, and one with a picture of the
eclipse, the name of the town and the exact latitude and longitude.

Before the eclipse started we went back to the burger place and joined
the folks there who were already wearing their eclipse glasses. I
figured the glasses wouldn't work well for me since I already wear
prescription glasses, so I had ordered two different types of "solar
filters" off Amazon - one was a set of cheap cardboard framea around
the same type of material that the glasses are made of, and the other
was a fairly nice, bigger, plastic-framed piece of dark glass. Both
meet ISO safety standards, but only the cheap cardboard ones arrived
in time for our trip. My wife texted me about 10 minutes before
totality to say that the mailman had just delivered the fancy glass
one. Oh well, at least she got to use it to view the eclipse from PA.

The moon started crossing the sun in the upper right corner, and after
the initial "oooh, ahhh, isn't that neat!", most people kind of
stopped paying attention until totality. At one point some guy in a
pickup truck drove by and yelled "What the hell you staring at, it's
just the damn moon!", which prompted the owner of the resturant to
say, in her sweetest southern accent, "Well, I guess every town has to
have its idiot".

As the eclipse progressed, I tried to take a few photos through the
solar filter with by my phone and a digital camera, but none of them
came out all that well.

Once the sun got beyond 95% or so covered, you could clearly tell the
area was rapidly getting darker and darker, and it almost seemed like
the color was starting to drain out of everything. And then totality
hit and there were audible gasps. From about four blocks away I heard
a woman scream "OH MY GOD!" like it was the rapture.

I spent the first minute or so trying to get pictures, and it didn't
seem like any of them were turning out, so I gave up and grabbed a
pair of binoculars that I'd borrowed from my parents. I had about a
minute and a half's worth of amazing view...but my first thought was
"wow, that's an amazing special effect." My brain just couldn't
accept that what it was seeing was real. My daughter attempted to
film the totality on her iPhone, and got a semi-decent video of it.

Near the end for just a second or two I saw little dots of light all
along the right edge of the moon - I'm not sure if that's what's
referred to as Baily's Beads or not. And then the edge of the sun
came back out and we got the diamond ring effect for a few seconds.
Then it was back to needing the filters because it was already too
bright to look at.

We only hung around for about 15 minutes after totality ended, because
we stupidly thought we could get a jump on traffic and maybe be back
home in PA by 1 or 2am. I should have realized that half the east
coast would all be trying to drive north on the same highway. It took
us over four hours just to get through the Knoxville, TN area.

Shortly before 3pm we stopped at a Chick-Fil-A and watched the last
little bit of the moon come off the sun while we ate. The place was
absolutely packed with people, which should have been another sign
that we weren't getting home any time soon. We heard one of the
employees tell a customer that when totality hit, their manager shut
down the resturant for two minutes so everyone could go outside and
see it. What a guy.

After that it was just stop and go traffic, mile after mile after
mile. We got stuck three times behind accidents that had the highway
at a standstill for hours. One of them was really bad - one of the
cars had caught fire and the front end was melted down to nothing. I
really hope that driver got out in time.

We finally gave up around midnight in southern Virginia and found what
I think might have been the last hotel room at a Ramada Inn. Back on
the road at 7am the next day and traffic was STILL bad. It took us
over eight hours to drive the last 300 or so miles home, and that was
with using my car's GPS system to route ourselves around a couple more
accidents that had interstate 81 at a standstill.

So, 25+ hours in the car, a couple hundred bucks for hotels, plus food
and gas...all for two and a half minutes of totality. It was totally
worth it. Especially now that my daughter is off in college and my
wife and I are empty nesters. I'll always have this trip to remember.

Oh, and when I got home I discovered that one of the totality pictures
I took with the digital camera actually turned out semi-decent. I put
it up on my web site at:

http://eichler.byethost11.com/Totality.jpg

-- Bob

  #6  
Old August 26th 17, 01:41 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
palsing[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3,068
Default 2017 solar eclipse Casper valediction

On Friday, August 25, 2017 at 3:59:51 PM UTC-7, Bice wrote:
On Tue, 22 Aug 2017 01:46:18 -0000 (UTC), D B Davis
wrote:

At twenty minutes until totality it was finally time to stop watching
space.tv's live stream and make that five minute walk down the alley to
a nearby park.


I'm mostly a lurker in this newsgroup (r.a.sf.w) and I know I'm a few
days late and a couple dollars short with this, but I've been
incredibly busy ever since the eclipse happened and I'm just now
getting caught up with my newsgroup reading. This gives me a chance
to tell my eclipse story one last time, because everyone I know in
real life is sick of hearing it. Feel free to skip this post before
you get sick of hearing it too.

When I first read about this eclipse a few years ago, I immediately
decided I was going to drive south (from PA) to see it. My daughter,
at the time, was pretty enthusiastic about going along, but as it
turned out the date of the eclipse ended up being two days before she
was supposed to start her first year of college, so she didn't want to
go. Fortunately my wife, who had to stay home because she couldn't
get out of work, talked her into going along as a last
dad-and-daughter bonding adventure before she went off to college and
adulthood. We had a great time - she decided she was going to perfect
a southern accent and spent the whole time in the car practicing it
and telling me all about her fictional family from the deep south.
She had me rolling with a story about an old family recipe for a soup
made out of goats that they call "Clippity Clippity soup". I don't
know where she comes up with stuff like that.

The day before the eclipse we drove pretty much all day to
Elizabethtown, KY, which was the closest I could find a reasonably
priced hotel room. The plan was to drive the next day to
Hopkinsville, KY, the site of maximum totality. But we saw on the
local news that Hopkinsville was a madhouse of tourists, so we changed
plans and just drove straight south until we hit the center line of
totality.

As we wound through backwoods of TN, we hit a road that was completely
closed due to blasting and had to detour and got a bit lost. We ended
up driving into a tiny little town called Carthage, TN. There was a
mom-and-pop burger joint that had a big sign out front that said "Free
Eclipse Parking", so we went there. The family that owned the place
was super friendly and invited us to hang out and watch the eclipse
with them. We had perfect weather (not a cloud in the sky), shaded
outdoor seating and a bathroom and air conditioning in the resturant.
We pretty much stumbled into the perfect place to view the eclipse.
As a way of thanking the owners we ate lunch there, and our hot dogs,
drinks and popsicles came out to around $10.

The two block "downtown" area was having an eclipse festival, because
I think they thought they were going to get a lot more tourists than
they did. In fact, I'm amazed they DIDN'T get more tourists, because
this town couldn't have been more than a mile off the center line of
totality. We met one guy from New York who had picked the town
randomly on a map, and I'm pretty sure he was the only other non-local
there. In order to be good tourists, we bought some lemonade and a
few t-shirts - two Dark Side of the Moon-themed shirts that the local
high school marching band was selling, and one with a picture of the
eclipse, the name of the town and the exact latitude and longitude.

Before the eclipse started we went back to the burger place and joined
the folks there who were already wearing their eclipse glasses. I
figured the glasses wouldn't work well for me since I already wear
prescription glasses, so I had ordered two different types of "solar
filters" off Amazon - one was a set of cheap cardboard framea around
the same type of material that the glasses are made of, and the other
was a fairly nice, bigger, plastic-framed piece of dark glass. Both
meet ISO safety standards, but only the cheap cardboard ones arrived
in time for our trip. My wife texted me about 10 minutes before
totality to say that the mailman had just delivered the fancy glass
one. Oh well, at least she got to use it to view the eclipse from PA.

The moon started crossing the sun in the upper right corner, and after
the initial "oooh, ahhh, isn't that neat!", most people kind of
stopped paying attention until totality. At one point some guy in a
pickup truck drove by and yelled "What the hell you staring at, it's
just the damn moon!", which prompted the owner of the resturant to
say, in her sweetest southern accent, "Well, I guess every town has to
have its idiot".

As the eclipse progressed, I tried to take a few photos through the
solar filter with by my phone and a digital camera, but none of them
came out all that well.

Once the sun got beyond 95% or so covered, you could clearly tell the
area was rapidly getting darker and darker, and it almost seemed like
the color was starting to drain out of everything. And then totality
hit and there were audible gasps. From about four blocks away I heard
a woman scream "OH MY GOD!" like it was the rapture.

I spent the first minute or so trying to get pictures, and it didn't
seem like any of them were turning out, so I gave up and grabbed a
pair of binoculars that I'd borrowed from my parents. I had about a
minute and a half's worth of amazing view...but my first thought was
"wow, that's an amazing special effect." My brain just couldn't
accept that what it was seeing was real. My daughter attempted to
film the totality on her iPhone, and got a semi-decent video of it.

Near the end for just a second or two I saw little dots of light all
along the right edge of the moon - I'm not sure if that's what's
referred to as Baily's Beads or not. And then the edge of the sun
came back out and we got the diamond ring effect for a few seconds.
Then it was back to needing the filters because it was already too
bright to look at.

We only hung around for about 15 minutes after totality ended, because
we stupidly thought we could get a jump on traffic and maybe be back
home in PA by 1 or 2am. I should have realized that half the east
coast would all be trying to drive north on the same highway. It took
us over four hours just to get through the Knoxville, TN area.

Shortly before 3pm we stopped at a Chick-Fil-A and watched the last
little bit of the moon come off the sun while we ate. The place was
absolutely packed with people, which should have been another sign
that we weren't getting home any time soon. We heard one of the
employees tell a customer that when totality hit, their manager shut
down the resturant for two minutes so everyone could go outside and
see it. What a guy.

After that it was just stop and go traffic, mile after mile after
mile. We got stuck three times behind accidents that had the highway
at a standstill for hours. One of them was really bad - one of the
cars had caught fire and the front end was melted down to nothing. I
really hope that driver got out in time.

We finally gave up around midnight in southern Virginia and found what
I think might have been the last hotel room at a Ramada Inn. Back on
the road at 7am the next day and traffic was STILL bad. It took us
over eight hours to drive the last 300 or so miles home, and that was
with using my car's GPS system to route ourselves around a couple more
accidents that had interstate 81 at a standstill.

So, 25+ hours in the car, a couple hundred bucks for hotels, plus food
and gas...all for two and a half minutes of totality. It was totally
worth it. Especially now that my daughter is off in college and my
wife and I are empty nesters. I'll always have this trip to remember.

Oh, and when I got home I discovered that one of the totality pictures
I took with the digital camera actually turned out semi-decent. I put
it up on my web site at:

http://eichler.byethost11.com/Totality.jpg

-- Bob


I bet that your daughter was *really* glad she went along.

It was really nice from eastern Oregon, too...

\Paul A
  #7  
Old August 26th 17, 01:52 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.written,sci.astro.amateur
D B Davis
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5
Default 2017 solar eclipse Casper valediction


In rec.arts.sf.written Bice wrote:
On Tue, 22 Aug 2017 01:46:18 -0000 (UTC), D B Davis
wrote:

At twenty minutes until totality it was finally time to stop watching
space.tv's live stream and make that five minute walk down the alley to
a nearby park.


I'm mostly a lurker in this newsgroup (r.a.sf.w) and I know I'm a few
days late and a couple dollars short with this, but I've been
incredibly busy ever since the eclipse happened and I'm just now
getting caught up with my newsgroup reading. This gives me a chance
to tell my eclipse story one last time, because everyone I know in
real life is sick of hearing it. Feel free to skip this post before
you get sick of hearing it too.

When I first read about this eclipse a few years ago, I immediately
decided I was going to drive south (from PA) to see it. My daughter,
at the time, was pretty enthusiastic about going along, but as it
turned out the date of the eclipse ended up being two days before she
was supposed to start her first year of college, so she didn't want to
go. Fortunately my wife, who had to stay home because she couldn't
get out of work, talked her into going along as a last
dad-and-daughter bonding adventure before she went off to college and
adulthood. We had a great time - she decided she was going to perfect
a southern accent and spent the whole time in the car practicing it
and telling me all about her fictional family from the deep south.
She had me rolling with a story about an old family recipe for a soup
made out of goats that they call "Clippity Clippity soup". I don't
know where she comes up with stuff like that.

The day before the eclipse we drove pretty much all day to
Elizabethtown, KY, which was the closest I could find a reasonably
priced hotel room. The plan was to drive the next day to
Hopkinsville, KY, the site of maximum totality. But we saw on the
local news that Hopkinsville was a madhouse of tourists, so we changed
plans and just drove straight south until we hit the center line of
totality.

As we wound through backwoods of TN, we hit a road that was completely
closed due to blasting and had to detour and got a bit lost. We ended
up driving into a tiny little town called Carthage, TN. There was a
mom-and-pop burger joint that had a big sign out front that said "Free
Eclipse Parking", so we went there. The family that owned the place
was super friendly and invited us to hang out and watch the eclipse
with them. We had perfect weather (not a cloud in the sky), shaded
outdoor seating and a bathroom and air conditioning in the resturant.
We pretty much stumbled into the perfect place to view the eclipse.
As a way of thanking the owners we ate lunch there, and our hot dogs,
drinks and popsicles came out to around $10.

The two block "downtown" area was having an eclipse festival, because
I think they thought they were going to get a lot more tourists than
they did. In fact, I'm amazed they DIDN'T get more tourists, because
this town couldn't have been more than a mile off the center line of
totality. We met one guy from New York who had picked the town
randomly on a map, and I'm pretty sure he was the only other non-local
there. In order to be good tourists, we bought some lemonade and a
few t-shirts - two Dark Side of the Moon-themed shirts that the local
high school marching band was selling, and one with a picture of the
eclipse, the name of the town and the exact latitude and longitude.

Before the eclipse started we went back to the burger place and joined
the folks there who were already wearing their eclipse glasses. I
figured the glasses wouldn't work well for me since I already wear
prescription glasses, so I had ordered two different types of "solar
filters" off Amazon - one was a set of cheap cardboard framea around
the same type of material that the glasses are made of, and the other
was a fairly nice, bigger, plastic-framed piece of dark glass. Both
meet ISO safety standards, but only the cheap cardboard ones arrived
in time for our trip. My wife texted me about 10 minutes before
totality to say that the mailman had just delivered the fancy glass
one. Oh well, at least she got to use it to view the eclipse from PA.

The moon started crossing the sun in the upper right corner, and after
the initial "oooh, ahhh, isn't that neat!", most people kind of
stopped paying attention until totality. At one point some guy in a
pickup truck drove by and yelled "What the hell you staring at, it's
just the damn moon!", which prompted the owner of the resturant to
say, in her sweetest southern accent, "Well, I guess every town has to
have its idiot".

As the eclipse progressed, I tried to take a few photos through the
solar filter with by my phone and a digital camera, but none of them
came out all that well.

Once the sun got beyond 95% or so covered, you could clearly tell the
area was rapidly getting darker and darker, and it almost seemed like
the color was starting to drain out of everything. And then totality
hit and there were audible gasps. From about four blocks away I heard
a woman scream "OH MY GOD!" like it was the rapture.

I spent the first minute or so trying to get pictures, and it didn't
seem like any of them were turning out, so I gave up and grabbed a
pair of binoculars that I'd borrowed from my parents. I had about a
minute and a half's worth of amazing view...but my first thought was
"wow, that's an amazing special effect." My brain just couldn't
accept that what it was seeing was real. My daughter attempted to
film the totality on her iPhone, and got a semi-decent video of it.

Near the end for just a second or two I saw little dots of light all
along the right edge of the moon - I'm not sure if that's what's
referred to as Baily's Beads or not. And then the edge of the sun
came back out and we got the diamond ring effect for a few seconds.
Then it was back to needing the filters because it was already too
bright to look at.

We only hung around for about 15 minutes after totality ended, because
we stupidly thought we could get a jump on traffic and maybe be back
home in PA by 1 or 2am. I should have realized that half the east
coast would all be trying to drive north on the same highway. It took
us over four hours just to get through the Knoxville, TN area.

Shortly before 3pm we stopped at a Chick-Fil-A and watched the last
little bit of the moon come off the sun while we ate. The place was
absolutely packed with people, which should have been another sign
that we weren't getting home any time soon. We heard one of the
employees tell a customer that when totality hit, their manager shut
down the resturant for two minutes so everyone could go outside and
see it. What a guy.

After that it was just stop and go traffic, mile after mile after
mile. We got stuck three times behind accidents that had the highway
at a standstill for hours. One of them was really bad - one of the
cars had caught fire and the front end was melted down to nothing. I
really hope that driver got out in time.

We finally gave up around midnight in southern Virginia and found what
I think might have been the last hotel room at a Ramada Inn. Back on
the road at 7am the next day and traffic was STILL bad. It took us
over eight hours to drive the last 300 or so miles home, and that was
with using my car's GPS system to route ourselves around a couple more
accidents that had interstate 81 at a standstill.

So, 25+ hours in the car, a couple hundred bucks for hotels, plus food
and gas...all for two and a half minutes of totality. It was totally
worth it. Especially now that my daughter is off in college and my
wife and I are empty nesters. I'll always have this trip to remember.

Oh, and when I got home I discovered that one of the totality pictures
I took with the digital camera actually turned out semi-decent. I put
it up on my web site at:

http://eichler.byethost11.com/Totality.jpg


There's two types of people in this world: people who don't want to talk
about the eclipse and people who never get enough eclipse talk. My type
is the latter, people who always want to talk about the eclipse.

Given your story, one of my mistakes was to keep the ISO eclipse glasses
on too long. When totality hit my mind still harbored doubts about the
wisdom of looking straight into the Sun. Another mistake was to leave my
binoculars at home.

Mothers with young children had their hands full with keeping their kids
safe from the Sun's blinding rays. One Down's Syndrome child tired of
her mother's admonitions and simply announced, "OK, I won't look at the
eclipse at all."

Her frustrated mother said, "Good, it's just as well."

My first inkling of a 2017 solar eclipse occurred around the year 2010.
My enlightenment happened in a serendipitous manner. One of my wealthy
clients allowed me unfettered access to his den. Although his den had
shelves full of rare, expensive books bought as investments, the books
right above his desk intrigued me the most.

Two types of books were shelved above his desk: golf books and Roger
Tory Peterson field guides. My client was an amateur ornithologist who
golfed at Pebble Beach and other clubs.

His golfing books mostly bored me because technology demands so much of
my patience that nothing's left over for golf. The Peterson field guides
were different. They were scientific. It became imperative for me to
acquire my own collection at any price.

One of my Petersons is titled _Stars and Planets_. It contains a chart
that shows all of the solar eclipses from 1979 to 2017. One day my eyes
looked closer at the line on the chart that crossed America and took
note of the date: 21 Aug 2017.

"Holly moly, there's going to be an solar eclipse that looks to be in
the vicinity of Casper!" (The chart measures 2 3/4" by 3 3/4" so it's
hard to be terribly accurate.) That's my own awakening to the eclipse.

Rumor has it that one million people trekked to Wyoming to view the
eclipse. It that's true, our population tripled over the weekend. Most
visitors drove in from Denver and Colorado's front range. The trip into
Wyoming wasn't so bad, but the trip back home was hell. It took some
unfortunate people eight hours to cover six miles.

Thank you,

--
Don
  #9  
Old August 26th 17, 09:35 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Chris.B[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,001
Default 2017 solar eclipse Casper valediction

On Saturday, 26 August 2017 02:57:16 UTC+2, D B Davis wrote:

Rumor has it that one million people trekked to Wyoming to view the
eclipse. It that's true, our population tripled over the weekend. Most
visitors drove in from Denver and Colorado's front range. The trip into
Wyoming wasn't so bad, but the trip back home was hell. It took some
unfortunate people eight hours to cover six miles.

Thank you,

--
Don


Thanks for all the stories of your eclipse experiences.
It was just like being there.

The problem with eclipses is that most people never get to practice.
They never last long enough to "get really good at it."
While transits last so long you get bored and wonder what to do next. ;-)
  #10  
Old August 27th 17, 07:43 AM posted to rec.arts.sf.written,sci.astro.amateur
David DeLaney[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1
Default 2017 solar eclipse Casper valediction

On 2017-08-25, Bice wrote:
Near the end for just a second or two I saw little dots of light all
along the right edge of the moon - I'm not sure if that's what's
referred to as Baily's Beads or not.


Yes; yes it is. You were seeing sunlight through the valleys. A Lunar country
& western song!

And then the edge of the sun
came back out and we got the diamond ring effect for a few seconds.


Heh. Did you notice paticularly how much brighter the 'diamond' was than the
ring? Even though a couple moments ago the ring had looked pretty bright?

We only hung around for about 15 minutes after totality ended, because
we stupidly thought we could get a jump on traffic and maybe be back
home in PA by 1 or 2am. I should have realized that half the east
coast would all be trying to drive north on the same highway. It took
us over four hours just to get through the Knoxville, TN area.


.... Huh. Carthage is a little ways north of I-40, but is much closer to
Nashville; were you trying to go back up I-75? Because yeah, that was gonna
be a tire fire from the start. Of course, so would I-65 have been; you might've
done better, in hindsight, to take county/state routes north from Carthage
until you hit I-69.

I was about 30-35 miles southwest of where I live in Knoxville, and it STILL
took me more than four hours to get home.

We finally gave up around midnight in southern Virginia and found what
I think might have been the last hotel room at a Ramada Inn. Back on
the road at 7am the next day and traffic was STILL bad. It took us
over eight hours to drive the last 300 or so miles home, and that was
with using my car's GPS system to route ourselves around a couple more
accidents that had interstate 81 at a standstill.


I estimate maybe 10% of the nation's population had squoze itself into the
totality band, and right afterwards ALL of it tried to escape at once. so yeah.

So, 25+ hours in the car, a couple hundred bucks for hotels, plus food
and gas...all for two and a half minutes of totality. It was totally
worth it.


Check! agreed.

Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting thru EarthLink - "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeableBLINK
my gatekeeper archives are no longer accessible / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
 




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