As I noted in a recent blog entry, I witnessed a total solar eclipse in 1970 when I was thirteen years old. After that eclipse ended, I recall looking up the date of the next total eclipse in the eastern US. Monday, August 21, 2017. Wow, that seemed impossibly far in the future. I would never be here for that.
But 2017 finally came around.
Dad Sweats the Plans
My excitement level began to rise over the summer. I originally planned to play it by ear on eclipse day. As the media began to forecast potentially millions of people traveling to see the eclipse, I realized the safest bet would be to book two hotel rooms in the middle of the path of totality in South Carolina. That would get us into position the night before the eclipse and enable us to drive either northwest or southeast to seek better weather if need be. I booked two rooms at the Hampton Inn in Greenwood, SC. It was just south of the center line and would experience 2 minutes 30 seconds of totality.
Up until about ten days before the eclipse, I debated whether I should stay flexible or commit to setting up at a specific location. I was considering the lake north of Greenwood, since bodies of water sometimes discourage the formation of overhead clouds in the summer. On August 12, my son Ken informed me that he and his family were going to join us in South Carolina. That prompted me to begin considering our comfort during the afternoon—that is, it might be good to be at a site with bathrooms and food and shelter where the kids could keep cool. I looked up Solar System Ambassadors in South Carolina and located Kelly Hughes, who works at Lander University in Greenwood. The school was planning a big social event around the eclipse. I told her I was going to be in town and offered to set up my observing equipment at the university. She very kindly invited me participate.
I was nervous as hell about the eclipse as the weekend arrived. I was in full Dad mode. I felt responsible for making the event worthwhile for my friends and family—as if I had control over anything other than making the hotel and observing site selections. Weather predictions kept changing almost hourly.
We drove down on Sunday morning. Despite road signs all along the interstate warning of highway delays due to the eclipse, there was no traffic—certainly less than normal—and we made the trip from Greensboro in under four hours. We arrived in time to hear that our good friend Sue Roy had decided not to stay in Greenwood after all, but would instead be going to Asheville where it was likely to be cooler than Greenwood’s heat and humidity.
After lunch and checking in at our hotel, we went over to Lander University to scout out the location and see if we needed a parking permit. That turned out not to be an issue; parking restrictions were not going to be enforced. We met Ken and Val for dinner late in the day and then called it a night. It started raining just as we got back to the hotel, and then rained pretty hard for the next hour. That was not happy news, as the forecast had not predicted rain. The forecast for the next day as of the time we went to bed was for mixed clouds and sun, getting cloudier as the day progressed. This did not sound promising. Somehow I went to sleep.
Eclipse Day
I woke up at 7:00 and was too keyed up to go back to sleep. My sister Penny had emailed me at 4:44 a.m. to say that she had decided to drive down from Chapel Hill to join us. The weather report said it was currently foggy, but I opened the curtains to bright sunshine. The weather report was still calling for sunny skies in the late morning giving way to partly cloudy skies at noon and heavier clouds later in the day. I tried to keep a positive attitude. There was nothing I could do at this point but deal with whatever the weather turned out to be.
We went out to the university to set up the equipment at about 10:40. There were a few big puffy cumulus clouds, but the weather looked very promising. School volunteers set up a canopy for us, and we dragged over a table and proudly displayed my Solar System Ambassador banner. I unpacked my gear and fiddled with trying to find the sun in the 20×80 binoculars. Of course none of the equipment would cooperate like it did when I had practiced at home. It didn’t make it any easier that people were now watching me trying to get the contraption working. I was wearing a black t-shirt and was pouring sweat in the late morning sun and humidity.
I finally found the sun, and the first thing my granddaughter Sammie did when she came over to look was to step on my projection screen on the ground. Okay, lesson learned; I put it up on a chair. I fought with the binoculars throughout the afternoon, as the image continually drifted all the time. The iOptron sky-tracker mount was doing its job of following the sun just fine. The bracket holding the binoculars to the mount was what kept slipping. I gouged my thumb trying to over-tighten the thumb screws on the tripod legs, and I had to be careful not to get blood on things!
We were set up next to the cotton candy machine. Val, Ken, Rossana, Sammie, Charlotte, Penny, and Jane – all of us trying to stay cool in the 90° heat and direct sunlight. I’m glad we had the canopy or it would have been impossible for the kids. I stood out in the sun the whole time. Even though I had put on some sunblock late in the morning, I must have sweated through it, because I got sunburned by the end of the eclipse.
First contact came right on time at 1:10. The bite out of the sun’s edge at the 2 o’clock position was unmistakable just seconds afterward. I tried taking a few photos of it with my Nikon camera and my homemade sun filter, but for some reason my camera’s autofocus refused to focus on the sun. I think I had changed the matrix focus setting after my last test session, and now I couldn’t fix it. Oh well. I abandoned direct photography until totality.
As the eclipse progressed, we showed people the several sunspot groups on the sun and pointed out the irregularities along the moon’s limb. There were four sunspots in a line across the middle of the sun, and two that had just peeked around the sun’s limb the previous day or two. Lots of people took pictures of me, the gear, and the projected image. They were fascinated by the sunspots, especially as the moon’s limb approached and then covered them.
About halfway through the initial partial phase, the few cumulus clouds from earlier in the day had pretty much disappeared, or were confined to a few degrees above the horizon. There wasn’t a cloud anywhere that could threaten our view of totality. I was ecstatic that it appeared we were going to get a great view.
It began to get noticeably cooler about half an hour before totality, and the sunlight felt markedly less intense. The light started taking on a quality as if you were looking at the scene through sunglasses.
Ken and Jane went over to a stand of trees and photographed the myriad crescent sun images projected by the gaps in the leaves.
I told everyone to wave at the moon at 2:25, as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was taking an image of the moon’s shadow crossing the Earth at that moment.
I saw a Facebook post from Janet Oliver in Greensboro: “WTF rain??” Wow, I sure was glad we didn’t stay there. The weather map showed an isolated pocket of rain centered directly over Greensboro just as the eclipse was nearing its maximum.
Five minutes before totality, the last of the sunspots disappeared behind the moon’s limb. My four month old granddaughter Charlotte started to get fussy, but I didn’t really notice, I was too focused on getting ready for things to start getting interesting in the sky. Less than a minute before totality, I put the camera on the tripod and tried to focus it on the sun. I wasn’t successful. It started getting dark to the west. I could already see Venus. The scene around us was growing dark rapidly. People started getting very excited. I called out “thirty seconds!” just after 2:39.
I looked up just as the moon was about to cover the sun. Suddenly we went from seeing the moon as just an arc cutout across the sun, to now being able to see the moon’s entire disk against the background light, with the brief flash of Bailey’s Beads and the diamond ring. Everyone started cheering.
The eclipsed sun looked like a huge hole ripped in the sky! I couldn’t believe it! The corona extended out several solar diameters, with big streamers at the 8 o’clock and 4 o’clock positions. Jupiter was visible well to the east of the sun. Regulus, just a degree or so northeast of the sun, was very bright in the camera and binoculars and showed up unexpectedly in my photos.
Although I was taking photos, I deliberately made myself look up at the sun without the camera many times so I could take it all in with my eyes. I gave up on the tripod after a few seconds and went to handheld photos for the last two minutes of totality. I told myself I wasn’t going to take many photos, but afterward I counted that I had snapped 40 shots in 2-1/2 minutes.
I wish I could describe what it was like to witness the eclipse, and all I can find to talk about is the technical talk. It was a thrilling experience—just magical to see the coronal streamers and the prominences at the same time. The rim immediately around the moon appeared pink/red, and then the streamers were more silvery. Photographs just can’t capture what you see with the naked eye, because you either expose for the prominences and miss the streamers, or expose for the streamers and overexpose the chromosphere.
I could tell when the end of the eclipse was coming. The diamond ring and Bailey’s Beads were just a few fleeting seconds of pure white light at the edge of the moon. The difference between seeing them live as opposed to their appearance in photographs is the same as the experience of looking at a rocket launch live vs. on TV. Cameras just can’t record the color and intensity of the blast of sunlight, like a welder’s torch. The sun reappeared and people cheered and clapped. I looked over and saw that Val was sitting on the ground and nursing Charlotte! That must be some sort of positive portent for her future, right?
I was relieved and delighted that the family got to experience the magic of it. It was so amazing to be around that many people who were just totally in awe of what was going on. I was half-crying, half-laughing. I hugged a young man who I had talked to just before totality. I had told him about my experience in 1970 and how eager I was to be in totality again. We both shared a very happy moment after totality ended.
We packed up right afterward. We didn’t stay for the second half of the eclipse, as the university’s event was over at three o’clock. I was drenched with sweat. We stopped by a gas station and I got a big iced drink. I came back to the hotel room and checked my photos. To my delight, many of them came out much better than I expected.
Aftermath
Ken and his family headed home after a quick change at the hotel, and Penny went home about the same time. Val and Rossana both had to work on Tuesday, so they couldn’t spend the night at the hotel. Both families hit horrendous traffic trying to make their way out of South Carolina. Penny got back to Chapel Hill after midnight. Ken and Val made it as far as our house by 12:30 a.m. and then drove the rest of the way back to Springfield, Virginia the next morning. I know they were all exhausted.
I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. There were plenty of lessons learned in terms of being more familiar with the camera gear and not tweaking settings after testing things! The folks at Lander U were very happy that I helped out with my equipment. I felt very welcome there; it was the perfect place for us to be.
I tweaked some of the photos in the week afterward, and produced a couple of good image stacks. One of my raw photos of the prominences came out very well indeed. Stacking it with one of the photos of the corona produced an excellent representation of how the eclipse looked to the eye. I was surprised that you can even see the outline of the lunar maria in reflected earthshine! I had no idea that was possible.
Now it’s time to start counting the days until the eclipse of April 8, 2024!