Total eclipse coming, 8 April 2024!
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Here is a photo I took of a tree shadow on the side of our building in St Charles, MO. Zoom in and you can see the crescents from the eclipse. We had about 98% totality.
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It was seeing the 2017 eclipse from the Madras, Oregon airport (they sold 20 ft. X 20 ft. “campsites”) that got us to wanting to see another, and so here we are at Mazatlán. Now we need to figure out when/where for the next one. I’ll be 90 the year the next one comes to North America, so I probably ought to be looking at more travel.
I’m glad to see other areas had acceptable weather, despite the forecasts. It was not looking good, forecast-wise here, but the cloud cover was thin and broken until the eclipse was about over. It’s solidly overcast now, a little over four hours later.
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Sooner Boomer
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My wife and I were walking to catch a bus back to where we are staying here in Mazatlán yesterday and went by a shop that was selling t-shirts that said something along the lines of “a total solar eclipse is Nature saying ‘hold my beer’”. If we hadn’t already gotten t-shirts I think we would’ve stopped and gotten those. Sorry I didn’t think to take a picture of them.
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Here's one from space - but hold on! Starlink satellites have cameras on them?!?
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Not flares. They are prominences. It's a common mistake if the news comentator is not well versed in solar astronomy.
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Yes I had difficulty explaining this to family. At least one was visible to naked eye. I finally just called it a flare.
Seeing that was in itself an awe inspiring experience.
We had a wonderful experience.
@Blast it Tom! and his crew came over, and my family had a great view. A few high wispy clouds, but sun was clearly viewable. Very worth watching. Here is a photo of the group with about 20% covered. Then in totality.
@Blast it Tom! and his crew came over, and my family had a great view. A few high wispy clouds, but sun was clearly viewable. Very worth watching. Here is a photo of the group with about 20% covered. Then in totality.
MClark
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lr64
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We had about 93 percent here. My wife and I both took pictures with our cell phone pictures which showed a nice, round sun. Are eclipses mass hallucinations? ;-)
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Made a camera obscura out of the hallway. That worked ok. Also projected an image onto paper using binoculars, which worked but was annoying because one had to move the binoculars occasionally. My wife made a little camera box, too. Shoe box with small hole, and another hole to look from the side and see the image cast inside the box.
I showed the projected image to a neighbor and a dog walker.
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Made a camera obscura out of the hallway. That worked ok. Also projected an image onto paper using binoculars, which worked but was annoying because one had to move the binoculars occasionally. My wife made a little camera box, too. Shoe box with small hole, and another hole to look from the side and see the image cast inside the box.
I showed the projected image to a neighbor and a dog walker.
stealth6
insert witty tagline here
Well that was a bit of an epic.
Original plan was to travel to near Waco, TX........ about 800 miles and about 13 hours drive.
Due to lots of weather/cloud cover forecasting in the days leading up to my drive, pretty much at the last minute I decided to change the plan.
Now I was going to go farther north, to near Paris, TX.......more miles, more time.
Lots more checking in on weather/cloud forecasting......and I decided I needed to be still farther north/east.
So I decided - at the last last minute - to head to the southeast corner of Oklahoma, and started to drive.
917 miles, and almost 15 hours of driving, and I arrived at a (surprisingly inexpensive) hotel in Broken Bow, Oklahoma and settled in the for night.
Woke up the morning of "the day" and the skies looked great. Nice.
Then those clouds started rolling in, and they were thick, and they kept getting worse..
But I still had about 3+ hours before the event started.
So, I got in my truck and started driving again, heading north/east.
I kept going until the sky started clearing......mostly.
At some point with a bit of time to spare, conditions looked pretty good, and I pulled into a small town church parking lot and set up my chair.
I don't know what the town was but it was perhaps an hour south/east of Fort Smith, Arkansas.,
Had a bit of a scare as some clouds started to roll in again.
But at the moment that counted, a big hole opened up, and the sun & moon were in perfect position.
And then it happened, and it was absolutely glorious.
Perfect!
And all completely worth it.
And now I'm sitting in a hotel somewhere east of Amarillo, halfway through what will be 13+ plus of driving to get back home.
And yes, I do see now, based on a bunch of y'all's reportage, that my original plan (Waco area) would have probably worked out just fine, as would have most any of the other places I considered and decided against between there and where I eventually ended up.
Doesn't matter......... I had a great view, and all's good.
I'm glad lots of you also had great views.
s6
Original plan was to travel to near Waco, TX........ about 800 miles and about 13 hours drive.
Due to lots of weather/cloud cover forecasting in the days leading up to my drive, pretty much at the last minute I decided to change the plan.
Now I was going to go farther north, to near Paris, TX.......more miles, more time.
Lots more checking in on weather/cloud forecasting......and I decided I needed to be still farther north/east.
So I decided - at the last last minute - to head to the southeast corner of Oklahoma, and started to drive.
917 miles, and almost 15 hours of driving, and I arrived at a (surprisingly inexpensive) hotel in Broken Bow, Oklahoma and settled in the for night.
Woke up the morning of "the day" and the skies looked great. Nice.
Then those clouds started rolling in, and they were thick, and they kept getting worse..
But I still had about 3+ hours before the event started.
So, I got in my truck and started driving again, heading north/east.
I kept going until the sky started clearing......mostly.
At some point with a bit of time to spare, conditions looked pretty good, and I pulled into a small town church parking lot and set up my chair.
I don't know what the town was but it was perhaps an hour south/east of Fort Smith, Arkansas.,
Had a bit of a scare as some clouds started to roll in again.
But at the moment that counted, a big hole opened up, and the sun & moon were in perfect position.
And then it happened, and it was absolutely glorious.
Perfect!
And all completely worth it.
And now I'm sitting in a hotel somewhere east of Amarillo, halfway through what will be 13+ plus of driving to get back home.
And yes, I do see now, based on a bunch of y'all's reportage, that my original plan (Waco area) would have probably worked out just fine, as would have most any of the other places I considered and decided against between there and where I eventually ended up.
Doesn't matter......... I had a great view, and all's good.
I'm glad lots of you also had great views.
s6
Sooner Boomer
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Walked out my back door to the deck, glasses on, great view! Sorry for the hassle, we had it good in Ohio. Funny part, the frogs in the pond next door started chirping about 10 minutes before totality.
ReynoldsSlumber
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Interesting to see the long-period regular angular adjustment that it does to keep the antennas pointed toward the Earth, while the solar panels stay Sun-locked. Wonder if they tuned the structural stiffness to have a resonance rather than be damped at that frequency, for a minimum of pointing energy required.
We had clear skies. Only about 50%. My wife did the shoe box trick. I looked for a couple of seconds and then had to go to Vegas. No change in the light.
I just finished cleaning the cat boxes, all 5 of them and I do it every night, and besides thinking about Almond Rocha I was thinking about the Starlink satellite with the camera. I wondered if only that one had a camera or do they all do. Because if they all do. How many UFO's have been seen. I know with 100% certainty their here and if all those satellites have cameras they must be seeing them. Maybe Musk has a deal with the Dark Government to watch and not tell. Has anybody else seen the videos or pictures of the large object near the Sun during the Eclipse?
blackwing94
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In case you missed the Eclipse.....
Missed the last one due to a small cloud at the wrong time. Drove again to Carbondale, the Eclipse Crossroad of Earth. 
This time the cloudiness disappeared, perfectly clear skies. Saw the diamond ring effect, and Bailey's beads---tiny versions of the diamond ring effect due to spaces between mountains at totality. Easy to miss but I was looking for them.
Driving back is normally almost exactly two hours. Took 4 1/2 hours, most of which was on I-24. I should have waited till nighttime to leave.
This time the cloudiness disappeared, perfectly clear skies. Saw the diamond ring effect, and Bailey's beads---tiny versions of the diamond ring effect due to spaces between mountains at totality. Easy to miss but I was looking for them.Driving back is normally almost exactly two hours. Took 4 1/2 hours, most of which was on I-24. I should have waited till nighttime to leave.
stealth6
insert witty tagline here
Oddly enough, for all of my trip being major miles, I didn't really have any eclipse-related traffic issues.
I did hit the road just after, which is generally a bad idea and when things usually go wrong.
And yes, there were what seemed like more cars on the road than what was probably "normal", but was able to pretty much maintain the speed limit the whole time.
I did run into two bits of delay and backup...one going through town in Fort Smith, and one a couple hours later on I-70, but honestly these two seemed to be more due to construction squeezes than excess eclipse traffic.....both opened right up and I was back to driving the speed limit once the construction zones were passed.
s6
I did hit the road just after, which is generally a bad idea and when things usually go wrong.
And yes, there were what seemed like more cars on the road than what was probably "normal", but was able to pretty much maintain the speed limit the whole time.
I did run into two bits of delay and backup...one going through town in Fort Smith, and one a couple hours later on I-70, but honestly these two seemed to be more due to construction squeezes than excess eclipse traffic.....both opened right up and I was back to driving the speed limit once the construction zones were passed.
s6
Ellie was let out of school at 12:00 for the eclipse.
Really crappy weather in RR, TX but we got lucky in the back yard during totality !
Saw the diamond ring and Venus in the sky
-- kjh
Really crappy weather in RR, TX but we got lucky in the back yard during totality !
Saw the diamond ring and Venus in the sky
-- kjh
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Here's my best shot from Jackman Maine yesterday, Notice the solar flares, especially the one at 7:00.
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Make your plans!
NTP2
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