I am back at home. I arrived around 7 p.m. Sunday night. I decided not to wait until Monday because I knew traffic might be busy on Monday.
I was quite busy all morning. I had been away for two weeks and there are things that got neglected while I was away.
This afternoon my second son called to say that he was bringing his youngest daughter and her son here to watch the eclipse. I think we had a very good spot to watch - our backyard.
We all had the special glasses and the baby was safe under the gazebo so he couldn't look up accidently.
It was interesting how the afternoon proceeded. We noticed it starting to get cooler and as the sun disappeared, I had to go into the house for a sweater. Son did an experiment with the binoculars to get an image on the ground. As the darkness was taking over, I noticed that one of my solar lights had started to shine. Later, in the darkness, they were all glowing.
And then it was dark. I didn't attempt to take a picture because I knew I would be disappointed and I figured there will be lots of pictures from people who know what they are doing.
And then the light started to return. The birds started to sing again and sounded like they do in the morning when the day is beginning. The solar lights went off again and we just talked about what we had seen.
I expect there will be lots of conversations in the days ahead about where we were and our reactions to what we saw.
This is a picture a friend of mine (who is usually taking pictures of birds) took.
The solar flares visible during totality.
I'm so glad you got to experience this! We were in the path of totality for the 2017 eclipse and I got the same feelings of awe this time, even though we only got around 83% occlusion. I kept my glasses from 2017, I had bought the slightly more expensive pair... tested them for any light leaks before feeling confident to use them again. I do remember the street lights coming on in 2017 here, and even here, it got "darker" even though it remained SUNNY, the angle of the light was not like at sunrise or sunset. The wind kicked up, and the temperature dropped.
ReplyDeleteWhat an amazing experience an eclipse is. I was kind of disappointed that my niece (who was in path but had cloudy skies) said if you'd seen a sunrise or a sunset, this was not any different. I think she's wrong (or trying to be generationally "cool"). She watched it on NASA TV, though.