2024 Total Solar Eclipse

[pipistrelle]

Here's a link to the current cloud cover in the U.S. - https://www.wunderground.com/maps/satel ... l-infrared

That map almost looks like something has swept the clouds away from the path of the eclipse.

It is currently sunny and in the sixties here in the Cleveland, Ohio area. Totality is about 3:15 here.

Except Texas.

[Suranis]

My favorite aunt lived in Kerrville, Texas for many years. Nasa has a telescope in Kerrville, woot woot.

NASA would know this, but I REALLY dont reccomend looking at the Eclipse through a telescope.

On the other hand, if one of the T Family is reading this, I'm a clueless forigner with no money. Use Binoculars.

[neonzx]

Here's a link to the current cloud cover in the U.S. - https://www.wunderground.com/maps/satel ... l-infrared

That map almost looks like something has swept the clouds away from the path of the eclipse.

It is currently sunny and in the sixties here in the Cleveland, Ohio area. Totality is about 3:15 here.

Good luck! I have family and friends up around there.

But you know how quickly NE Ohio weather can change on a dime.

[Rolodex]

A little late IMO, but Time magazine has an eclipse display where you enter your zip code to see the predicted event:
https://time.com/6963248/total-solar-ec ... -view-2024

Super cool! I'm following along and it's matching up perfectly with what I'm seeing. We got a clear sky today, after forecasts of partly cloudy!

[MN-Skeptic]

Totally overcast in the Twin Cities. I can't even tell where the sun is in the sky.

Sigh.

But a big thumbs up to all the FogBowers who are able to see this. I'm happy for you!

[johnpcapitalist]

I had thought about taking the day off and driving up to northern Vermont to check out the eclipse, but research showed the odds of cloud cover at about 80% this time of year. So I nixed that plan. When today surprisingly dawned without a cloud in the sky, I quickly cobbled together a pinhole camera out of a Costco box and some long metal shelving (to get a longer focal length while fixing the lens and the screen relative to each other).

Between 1:00 pm, when the pinhole camera was ready to go and 2:10 pm, the time of totality (we're in about a 60% region here), the clouds came in and by the magic moment, the cloud cover was thick enough that I couldn't even get a gray smudge on the projection screen.

Sigh... Well, I'll be ready for the next one in August 2045...

[MN-Skeptic]

For those with clear skies, using a colander to project images on the sidewalk is pretty cool.

[Walt Tuttle]

Got lucky, clear skies in Hot Springs Arkansas. Unfortunately I think I dorked-up my camera settings and didn’t get any good pictures of totality. Oh well, lived in the moment.

[MN-Skeptic]

NASA's live video feed -

[Rolodex]

Got lucky, clear skies in Hot Springs Arkansas. Unfortunately I think I dorked-up my camera settings and didn’t get any good pictures of totality. Oh well, lived in the moment.

My kid hopped in his truck and drove up from Oxford, MS to Jonesboro for totality (about 2.5 hours). He just parked in a parking lot and had a great view. There were going to have a sizeable cover in Oxford, but it turned out to be a really cloudy day, so he made a great call.

We have clear skies here in south Alabama so, a good view. Got kinda dimmish and could see perfectly with eclipse glasses. I didn't even have to leave my kitchen!

[Kendra]

Just over at the top of the highest mountain in Vermont I think it was. One guy popped the question to his GF right when eclipse was happening.

[jemcanada2]

It was so cloudy here that you only got a few glimpses of the eclipse. Here’s a link to video I took during the totality of the eclipse. It became dark as night, quiet, and cold for a few minutes and then was daylight again. Interesting!!

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/zXwa8K ... tid=WC7FNe

[much ado]

We went to Sweetwater, TX to view the eclipse. Forecast was for thunderstorms about the time of the eclipse, 2:34pm CDT. But we were lucky, just mostly cloudy with plenty of views during breaks in the clouds.

Here is a not very good raw iPhone image (zoomed) at totality through the clouds. There was a noticeable red dot at about five o'clock, probably a solar flare. Let us know if you see it also. It does not show in this image, but was very clear to the naked eye. We were using binoculars with filters.

[northland10]

Since we had completely clear skies (it's been a long while since we had that), I tossed together a shoebox viewer. It worked, especially when I took th shoes out. I have not used one or thos since elementary.

We were around 92% so it was an odd darker time. It was if I was wearing my polarized sunglasses.

I also watched the webcams at Saddleback Mountain in Rangeley, ME. It was like somebody lowered the house lights. It was that fast 5-10 seconds or so.

[RVInit]

My favorite aunt lived in Kerrville, Texas for many years. Nasa has a telescope in Kerrville, woot woot.

NASA would know this, but I REALLY dont reccomend looking at the Eclipse through a telescope.

On the other hand, if one of the T Family is reading this, I'm a clueless forigner with no money. Use Binoculars.

You have not seen the sun until you've seen it through a solar telescope. You can see the granular texture of the roiling surface, and also see the prominences and solar spots. It's all perfectly safe as they use special filters. And they are not terribly expensive either.

https://www.highpointscientific.com/cor ... JcEALw_wcB

[Rolodex]

A+++ tweet

[Walt Tuttle]

There was a noticeable red dot at about five o'clock, probably a solar flare. Let us know if you see it also.

I saw that as well here in Arkansas. Didn’t show up in my crappy photos, but saw it with the naked eye.

[Whatever4]

April 8 in Maine has a 78% chance of clouds. But today was glorious. 62 degrees with perfectly cloudless skies.

W2 and I went out to the parking lot of our condo building a few minutes before the maximum totality (96.7%). There were about a dozen people with eclipse glasses. I took the obligatory colander shot, we chatted with the neighbors. At the height, the light dimmed as if a cloud had covered the sun and some lights came on. Temperature dropped a few degrees. One neighbor got some great pictures with odd rainbow rings around the very slim crescent sun. That was it.

We asked Tricksy if she noticed anything. She said “it’s Maine, there’s always weather. I’se used to it.

Some friends from Germany went to Texas for the festivities. Cloudy, but the sky cleared enough to see through the clouds. Last year, I talked my sister-out-law out of coming to Maine from Washington state by quoting the weather stats. Oops.

IMG_2867.jpeg (163.61 KiB) Viewed 280 times

[much ado]

There was a noticeable red dot at about five o'clock, probably a solar flare. Let us know if you see it also.

I saw that as well here in Arkansas. Didn’t show up in my crappy photos, but saw it with the naked eye.

Yeah, the flare showed in the images when viewed on my iPhone, but disappeared when transferred to my laptop, probably some kind of compression involved. Below is a link discussing observation of solar flares during the eclipse, which shows a flare at 5 o'clock.

Oh, and we're in Spicewood, Texas, west of Austin, not in Sweetwater

BMKG Studies Solar Flare During April 8 Total Solar Eclipse

[Rolodex]

This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen.

[Shizzle Popped]

We had a perfect view of it here in central Indiana. Sadly, my cell phone photos are grainy and indistinct. I don't have the 16 stop neutral density filter needed for my DLSR for use before the totality and the battery I just charged last week packed up as soon as I turned it on for the totality. Coming up on the totality everything turned to hard dusk and all our landscape lights came on. There were dogs barking everywhere around us except for our dogs, which bark at anything that moves, but didn't seem the least bit disturbed by the fact that it was suddenly very dark outside.

And, yes, we all saw the solar flare around the 5 o'clock position.

[noblepa]

My wife and I had a perfect viewing spot on our south facing deck.

At about 2:25, using the "eclipse" glasses, you could see the moon start to take a bite out of the sun. There was no outward manifestation at that time. The sunlight seemed as bright as ever.

By 2:45, the moon had covered about 50 percent of the sun. It was getting noticeably dimmer, but not terribly so.

By 3:00, the moon had covered perhaps 75-80 percent of the sun. Getting dimmer and dimmer, but still a nice summer day. It was starting to get noticeably cooler, as well.

At 3:10, the sun was almost completely covered, but the daylight around was still reasonbly bright. Perhaps what it would be about an hour before sunset. Getting pretty cool. Using the glasses, the sun was almost completely covered. Only a tiny sliver remained visible, yet it was still not safe to look without the glasses.

In the next three minutes, it went from twilight to midnight dark. I could no longer read the settings on my camera. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees. It was now safe to look at the sun without the glasses.

The weird thing was that, looking at the horizon, it appeared to still be normal daylight. I guess that it was far enough away to be out of the shadow and the atmosphere was diffusing the light. You see that near sunset, but only in the west. If you turn around and look east, it is pitch dark. In this case, the light at the horizon was visible in all directions.

I had heard that scientists were hoping to be able to see solar flares or coronal mass ejections. At the point of totality, I looked, but did not see any. The corona seemed just the slightest bit rough or uneven. Not perfectly circular. After it was over, I went inside and CNN was showing it live from Stowe, Vermont, where it was reaching totality. On their view, I could easily see the flares. Unbelieveable.

In Vermont, some guy popped the question to his girlfriends at the moment that totality ended. I don't know if he arranged it with the cameraman or producer, but CNN got it on camera. He probably did pre-arrange it. It was pretty dramatic, because when totality ends, there is a visible flash of light as the moon recedes.

BTW, she said yes.

The guy on CNN said that totality only occurs every 375 years at any given point on earth, but later, on a local channel, someone said that the last total eclipse visible in Ohio had been in 1820 or so. The next one will be in 2440-something, so the cycle does not appear to be perfectly repeatable.

[Mrich]

I was in Lima OH and it was perfect. At around 30% I took our extra eclipse glasses to some contractors across the street and they went from “oh is that happening?” To “Hey look at that!” And of course totality was amazing- we heard yells and applause all around the neighborhood.

Oh and we saw the red dot too!

[Shizzle Popped]

436935173_1523234675263736_7936835437351932590_n.jpg (47.43 KiB) Viewed 244 times

[noblepa]

CSPAN had some views from the International Space Station. It showed an enormous shadow over part of the US.

It was really weird. It reminded me of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, except that that is not a shadow.