Chasing the Great American Eclipse ~ Aug 2017

One question for those that have read my tales. The format is meant to be text and photos with the photos centred and no text to the left and right of the photo. (The videos should also have no text next to them but they won't centre on the page for me).

Does anyone view it differently? Are the photos off-centre and/or have text to the left or right? If so, what device are you viewing it on?

Thx

 

Ah...I also use a Surface Pro 4, so you see them on the device that it was created on. LOL. Nice to know it shows up like it should on the same device.

 

And I have no problems viewing it via my MacBook Air & Safari. Text and photos as described.

This is the very long term forecast for the US for the day of the eclipse.




Subject to change.

It may have made an impression on my waistline as well...LOL

We're in a little bit of a panic mode here. Nebraska....known for clear skies....has a cloudy forecast for tomorrow so we may have to get up early and boot it to Wyoming. The bit variable is traffic. There will be a lot coming up from Denver, so we're looking at routes north of the interstates to sneak into Wyoming. That's going to be interesting. There's even a Google map indicating expected traffic.

 

It was incredible for us in North Carolina. We drove early in the morning about 45 miles to the beautiful town of Highlands. As the time of the eclipse was approaching big clouds were creating anxiety since they kept growing and growing until it covered the whole sky. We were in two cars so the grandchildren took off in a westernly direction but we stayed put in the city Recreation Center, almost by ourselves, at about 2:36 (not sure if the exact time, but with not a second to spare, the cloud cover opened up just in time to see the moon covering the sun, we saw the corona and two diamonds!!! We could hear people all around cheering and applauding. It was over too soon and the clouds returned! We could not have asked for a better viewing. By the way, the grandchildren looking for it, had to stop on the side of the road but saw it as well and took amazing photos.

Well, the usually clear Nebraska threw a lot of plans into disarray as a lot of people had to race west. We had a spot near Hyannis, Nebraska, but a few minutes before the eclipse started, it was obvious the broken cloud was getting very thick, so we packed up in a hurry and booted west to Alliance at a spot about 4 miles north of the centre track. We pulled off the road only to see one big cloud coming for the sun with totality only minutes away, so we piled in like a bunch of kids filling up a volkswagon and went a couple miles west. At that point we were like STOP! But they got away from the cloud and had 2 minutes to set up. My first pic was taken 4 minutes to totality and I had time to get it on a tripod.

One tourmate I had helped to set up custom settings had listened to another who just happened to say he always uses apeture setting....while my settings were all manual with bracketing. He switched it and it fooled up all his settings. (I'll be sending him these pics below). The only thing we really missed out on was setting up cameras to get our reactions. Also missed getting the whole environment which went from dim to dark twilight in an instant at totality. It was like a curtain being pulled across the landscape. That was worth the cash!

Heading back to Denver today....and have six weeks to get ready for Tibet.

This was mere seconds after second contact with prominence and chromosphere visible.



The inner corona with what we believe is Sirius (the star just to the lower left)



The Diamond Ring



And the Diamond Ring just an instant before third contact.

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Wow wow wow!!! I expected good pictures from you Chech but these are prize winners! It paid off to do all the running around! Sensational!

Chech,


I've been showing off your photos to my co-workers today!!!!!! They were speechless too!!!


Is that you in the blue top in one of the photos on Tempest FB page?  

Magnificent photos there, Chech. Looking forward to seeing the others.

For the record, you wouldn't have seen the star Sirius up there near the sun in August. I've been looking at Sirius in recent weeks and it's a night star at the moment and can be seen all night in December (our summer in Australia, so we're used to seeing it up there on warm evenings). It's also a night star at the moment in the northern hemisphere.

The bright star is most likely Regulus (Alpha Leonis). The sun is currently in the constellation Leo and Regulus is the brightest star in this grouping. You should also have picked up Mars and Venus in your photos if you didn't zoom in too far.

Yeah. I checked a bit more and it may be Regulus. I was definitely zoomed in on it with the 600mm. I never had time to set up the second camera since we only had like 6 minutes to get out of the van and set up. One girl had her video camera trained on us and promised to send it to us. It should show the curtain effect when the sun was completely covered.

The tale shouldn't be long in coming out. It's already written and just waiting for me to insert the photos. With a weekend of rain coming up, I should be able to hibernate all weekend and get it done. I want to get it done fast cause I need to start getting packed for Tibet.