573 replies to this topic

[bill w]

bailed on kerville and went with my back up plan russellville arkansas for the eclipse
where the forecast was much better on friday

 

clouds are going to make processing difficult, but here are the easy ones straight out of the camera:
https://astrowhw.blo...first-take.html

-bill w

[maadscientist]

First run processing Monday night from Pangburn Arkansas. Just got home, so I will start the lot.

 

Dan L

 

[cpman]

This eclipse ended up being an outstanding experience. I’m so glad it worked out so well for me and that a lot of folks across the path seemed to have dodged the worst of the clouds.

I’d been looking forward to this eclipse since I first found out about it in elementary school about 15 or 16 years ago: there was going to be a total eclipse where I lived! I didn’t know what it would be like, but I was excited for it.

In 2012, I’d really wanted my family to go west to catch the annular eclipse, but I had to settle for watching the partially eclipsed sun set from home. In 2014, I had a telescope and solar filter and watched the partial eclipse after school. By this time, I worried I might not be in Texas or elsewhere in the path in 2024.

In 2017, as I was returning to college, my family and I dodged thunderstorms in Missouri and saw a hair under 2 minutes of totality without any clouds. This was one of the most profound experiences of my life and solidified my determination to make sure I saw the 2024 eclipse, regardless of where I was or what I was doing. Later, I let my friends at college know they had an open invitation to come watch the 2024 eclipse with me.

Although my friends ended up all across the country, I ended up back in Austin. Last October, I drove a bit southwest to watch the annular eclipse and the odd light reminded me of the moments leading up to totality in 2017. I’m glad I caught an annular eclipse — it was really neat and I’d travel again to see one, but it really didn’t compare to totality. My friends booked travel to come out for the total eclipse and I began to be worried about weather. It seemed like a crapshoot: days in April in Texas can be crystal-clear, without a single cloud in the sky, or they can be 100% overcast. It has always seemed to me like in-between days are rare in the spring. I really hoped the weather would pan out, especially because some of them had missed totality in 2017 behind a cloud in Carbondale.

As April approached, the forecast turned grim and I began to fret. From the beginning, my plan had always been to keep an eye on the weather and be prepared to be mobile, but it was looking like the whole state would be clouded out. It would be amazing to see my friends regardless of the outcome, but they were traveling a long way on grad student budgets, so I wanted to try and make sure we could have success. A road trip to Arkansas with my friends would be fun, but the weather looked iffy even for that.

As my friends began to arrive, the forecasts began to turn a bit and seemed to suggest there might be less clouds in northeast Texas. We decided to make that our target location, as there was some consistency. I wouldn’t be able to catch the eclipse from my childhood home like I’d wanted, but we would try to get it somewhere!

The morning of the eclipse rolled around, and we took off for the northeast corner of the state. We’d prepared a road map with the path of totality drawn on it so that we could stay within it for the whole road trip, in case we encountered traffic and had to find an emergency spot as totality approached. The sky looked dismal, but as we drove north, there were some signs of hope.

Once we got to Corsicana, we began watching the GOES feed to try and figure out where there might be a hole in the clouds. Initially, we were going to try for Sulfur Springs, but as we drove north, the satellite showed low clouds building in. There was a hole in the clouds drifting north, so we decided to go a little bit southeast of there. It seemed like this hole would be positioned perfectly over Winnsboro for totality, so we made that our destination.

We pulled into a gas station with the partial eclipse underway. The sky was full of so many clouds, I was worried the satellite image was wrong. There’s no way it would be clear for the eclipse. We used our fingers to make little pinhole cameras, projecting images of the crescent sun on the asphalt. Shadows took on a strange appearance — very sharp on the right, fuzzy on the left. We drove a bit down the road to a supermarket parking lot and set up our chairs.

The clouds began to thin out, and I offered eclipse glasses to other groups of people in the same parking lot — a few took them. The light began to turn strange, as if the world were becoming desaturated. The clouds thinned more and there was blue sky with only the most barely perceptible haze. Here it was: it looked like we’d made it! The light took on an almost silvery appearance, and it began to dim further. The shadows got even stranger and the sunlight lost its warmth against your skin. The seconds ticked by more and more slowly, as anticipation built.

Suddenly, the gradual dimming around us accelerated. The lights in the parking lot turned on, the last bit of the sun disappeared, and it was twilight. We all took off our glasses and stared. I immediately noticed Jupiter and Venus flanking the sun. I grabbed the binoculars — the corona filled the whole field of view and I was stunned to see two prominences. Passing them on to one of my friends, I was shocked to see the same prominences with the naked eye! As one slipped behind the moon, I turned around to look at the horizon. Instead of the bright sunset we’d had around us in 2017, this was like the end of sunset — just a hint of orange glow in the sky. Our four minutes of totality passed in what seemed like the same amount of time as the last minute leading up to it.

The corona was stunningly huge (at least 5°-6° across, judging by how big it looked in binoculars), striking me as much larger than 2017. The color of the prominences stood out to me more than anything else — a ruby red so intense and saturated, it didn’t seem real, especially after the partial phases de-saturating the colors around us. The deep blue of late twilight, with Venus and Jupiter sparkling on either side of the sublime, alien sight of the eclipsed sun is something I’ll never forget.

After totality ended, we celebrated and had a great picnic as the partial phases unfolded in reverse. Despite the worrying forecasts, we’d done it! Four minutes of totality without a cloud anywhere near the sun. All our collective anxiety over missing it vaporized and was replaced by pure awe.

Having been looking forward to this eclipse for more than half of my life, it definitely made an enormous impact on me. The excitement, anxiety, awe, and joy of it all will stay with me forever. 2017 was really cool and made me an umbraphile, but this eclipse was so much more special in so many ways. Sharing the experience with some of my closest friends made it even more amazing and special. It’s taken several days to even begin processing my thoughts about this event, but I’m so glad to have had it work out.

Edited by cpman, 11 April 2024 - 10:39 AM.

[Exeligmos]

My eclipse weather-forecasting strategy:

 

1. Climatology - If I was going to have to make reservations somewhere, I would have to go with south Texas, or somewhere in the deserts of Mexico if I was adventurous. Mexico would be out of the question, and April is severe weather season in Texas, so I'll have to hold off for a bit. As they say, climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.

2. Climate oscillation patterns - As it turns out, 4/8/24 lies in the waning El Niño cycle. This has some effect on cloud cover, but not enough to clarify the situation. I still pored over this information before the long-range forecasts came out. I just can't help myself.

3. Long-range forecasts - About 16 days out, I found myself scrutinizing 300 MB jet stream forecasts and spaghetti models. This could indicate the positions of any ridges or troughs. Unfortunately, it was looking like there could be a trough in the west and a ridge in the east. A nightmare scenario would be a frontal boundary draped over the entire eclipse path.

4. 7-day forecasts - By the beginning of April, it was becoming apparent that there would likely be a frontal boundary over Texas and some type of storm system over the central part of the US. Because of the uncertainty, the position of the Midwest low would jump all over the place. The GFS cloud outlooks were horrifying. Texas was already doomed by this time.

5. 3-day forecasts - The weather pattern was beginning to gel. The Midwestern states were trending better, while poor New York was looking increasingly bleak. By now, it was apparent that the New England would be favored. Missouri through Indiana was a runner-up, with cirrus clouds overrunning the region. At least there would be no thicker lower clouds.

6. Stupid short-range forecasts... - Aren't the short-range models out by three days before the big event? I think so, but I don't feel like rewriting the section above. Anyway, once the short-range models were coming online, the Midwest was becoming a cloud fest again. It's as if the map turned into paint-by-numbers, and the eclipse path was assigned a dark shade of cloudy gray. I about blew a gasket. Seriously, it looked like a prankster at the weather service added in the clouds by hand. By now, it was becoming too late to consider New England. Besides, I didn't want to become a subject of a Stephen King story as millions of denizens of NYC, Philly and Boston would descend upon the sparse, snowy/muddy logging roads of Maine.

7. One day out - It was now go time. Being in Kansas City, I decided to stage in St. Louis the night before, and have options to drive into either Illinois or SE Missouri. I could potentially travel as far as Indiana or Arkansas if the weather warranted that. By the grace of the Maker, I snagged the last room in Alton, IL.

8. Eclipse day - When I woke up, I did a final check of the cloud models and satellite imagery. The situation was a wash between IL and MO. I picked MO. I eventually ended up in Jackson. By this time, I was frazzled. I'm glad I didn't have to make a hard choice at this point.

9. Last-minute cloud dodging - Fortunately, I wouldn't have to evade thick cirrus clouds once I reached my destination. If it looked like that could be a possibility, I would have chosen southern Illinois for its more extensive area and denser road network. if there were low cumulus clouds, I probably would have ended up near Rend Lake for its potential cloud-inhibiting properties.

 

The days leading up to the eclipse were quite stressful. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who could not pull away from scrutinizing the cloud-cover outlooks. In the end, it was more than worth it!

[W5JCK]

Herein is my final (for now) post processed rendition of my HDR stacked eclipse corona image. HDR for those who don't know is the acronym for high dynamic range images which are typically a stack of multiple images each with a slightly different exposures in order to capture more stops of light. The human eye can generally see about 18 to 20 stops of light. The typical modern, digital camera in our price range can capture only about 12 to 14 stops of light, which is far less than our eyes can see. So we stack multiple photos covering a large range of light stops to create a composite HDR image that is more pleasing to our eyes.

 

In this corona image I stacked 18 photos which spanned across 9-1/3 stops of light, add to that the 12 stops of the first (and all other) photo and you get a little more than 20 stops of light. The result is rather stunning, and took hours of tedious work in Photoshop to produce. But it was a once in a lifetime shot so I think it was worth the effort!

 

I finally had time to deal with the high, thinnish clouds, so here is a better image of the corona.

 

[W5JCK]

Here is my 400mm composite of the Great North American Solar Eclipse of 2024:

 

I finally had time to deal with the high, thinnish clouds, so here is a better image of the corona.

 

[GiffS]

Here's a couple of versions of one still shot from my AT72EDII and ASI678MC. One is the stock version and the other the "Steven Spielberg" version

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[W5JCK]

I found these two (actually three) stars near the Sun during totality. Kind of cool to see other stars (other than our Sun) during daytime. I saw at least one other star in the photos, and I saw Venus in the iPhone video I shot and with the naked eye.

 

Zeta Piscium is a double-star system in Pisces, so two stars next to each other.

 

Edited by W5JCK, 12 April 2024 - 11:08 AM.

[brentwood]

I have not read all the posts but one thing I have not seen mentioned is the weird light just before totality. This was my first total and probably my last, but I did notice the sharpening of the shadows  at about 50-75% coverage  , but at about a minute to, I really noticed a real difference in  how all our surroundings took on what appeared to be an extreme high contrast look. It would be interesting to replicate this somehow!

[W5JCK]

I have not read all the posts but one thing I have not seen mentioned is the weird light just before totality. This was my first total and probably my last, but I did notice the sharpening of the shadows  at about 50-75% coverage  , but at about a minute to, I really noticed a real difference in  how all our surroundings took on what appeared to be an extreme high contrast look. It would be interesting to replicate this somehow!

Unfortunately I still had the filters on both cameras so my photos from that moment all have black backgrounds. I was busy preparing to take off the filters on both cameras and getting ready to start the brackets, but I do remember there was a gradual darkening followed by a sudden, deeper darkening. The birds went a bit chirpy then and I heard a few hundred elementary school kids a half block away ooing and ahhing in unison when the sudden, deeper darkening occurred. I videographed a couple of black birds flying around in a state of excitement. I’m guessing the bird chirping was their way of expressing, “What the CHIRP just happened!” :-)

[Exeligmos]

Trying to conjure up an apt description of my impression of totality...

 

We have entered a dark vaulted room. Feeble sunlight barely filters through heavily curtained windows on both sides. In the middle, the moon is an opaque disk that hovers just below the bluish-gray ceiling. Large, bright, white fluorescent bulbs, attached to and hidden just above the disk, cast soft narrow beams of varying intensity out in multiple directions. A fainter diffuse glow scatters out over much of the ceiling. A handful of tiny hot-pink incandescent bulbs attached to the edge of the disk complete the display.

 

I may actually attempt to build something like this.

Edited by Exeligmos, 13 April 2024 - 02:13 AM.

[musicengin]

A friend of mine is an avid peak bagger, like 80 of them a year, and he's been planning for this eclipse for years, inviting all his large collection of friends. So for the trip there were four of us, the other two being a young father with his three year old daughter in a kid backpack, and a lot of snow on Coburn Mountain in Maine, which is about 3717 feet. There were snowmobiles packing down the trails, or I don't think we'd've made it to the top, breaking snow on snowshoes is sloooooow.

 

By 2:30 pm I had fallen behind, doing about 30 steps, and stop, and 30 more, and there was a good spot beside the trail, for sitting and seeing, so I ended up having the eclipse all to myself, almost all the way up while my three friends had gone off all the way to the top.

 

It was my second total eclipse -- the first was back in 1972, when I was 13 and my family went up to Cape Breton to see it. Magenta prominences projected on paper through the family monocular, and hazy partly-cloudy sunsets in pink and purple and rose all around the horizon.

 

On Coburn, there were a lot of little pine trees, which made little crescents all over the smooth snow, dancing in the wind, and even during the partial phases the sun was hot and bright, just dimming enough for me to know it was getting eaten into. The eclipse glasses I'd brought were buried so deep in my pack I never found them, but the little crescents on the snow were all the image projections I needed.

 

I had hoped to see the moon shadow coming across the lands below, but I didn't have a time piece, so it surprised me when with a swoop the totality came across where I was, and then I could look up and see the flaring hot white ring of escaping sunlight around the hole in the sky that was the moon, with one hot, saturated magenta prominence sticking out near the bottom and a dark grey blue sky stretching out all around. I saw Venus, and Jupiter, but couldn't see the comet reputed to be up there.

 

And I looked around and saw the horizon through the trees, and a pale yellow grey sort of sunset all around -- not as pretty as the 1972 one, when there were a lot of clouds to catch the colors, but just as impressive.

 

So I sat in the snow admiring, and there was the one big gap in the trees where the trail went down and I could see south across the various little mountains of Maine, and there I did get to see the moon shadow begin to recede, rather slowly because of the angle I was seeing it from -- that was one more thing I'd hoped to see, the edge between light and moon shadow!

 

And then the first Bailey's bead and no more looking at the sun, and watching the many little crescents swooping and blowing on the snow until my friends came back down from the top and the long hike back down to the cars.

[Seachange79]

Clouded out unfortunately. Anyone willing to share their data to at least process?

If you're still looking for images to play with, I'll gladly send you mine. I can't seem to do anything with them....even when trying to follow various tutorials! They aren't great, but they are pretty decent.
Message me.

[Look at the sky 101]

I would like to take the opportunity to say a big thank you.
very pretty photos and very beautiful experiences shared here.
My experience was memorable thanks to you.
thank you very much to everyone.

[Thomas A Davis]

I had several shots I think came out OK from Indiana.  The first is of the beginning of totality with Bailey's Beads on the left edge.  Several prominences well seen.  Canon T3i and AT90CFT at F/6.

 

Tom

 

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[Thomas A Davis]

The second I got was some depth into totality.  AT90CFT at F/6 and Canon T3i.

 

Tom

 

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Edited by Thomas A Davis, 17 April 2024 - 11:50 AM.

[Thomas A Davis]

Finally the diamond ring effect with the Seestar.

 

Tom

 

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[W5JCK]

Here is my personal favorite of all the photos I took on 8 April 2024. It is a single photo captured at just the right moment through luck more than anything else. It best represents the awe inspiring beauty of Mother Nature at her best as she shines through the clouds with a view that is difficult to express in words. There are many composites I made from series of bracketed photos which were well thought out in advance and took a lot of complex mathematics and science into consideration, and they are spectacular in their own ways. But this single photo with very minimal post processing surpasses them all. I can't help but think what our distant ancestors tens of thousands of years ago must have thought when they gazed upwards at such a sight.

 

Photo captured with Sony a7C and Canon 400mm f/5.6L USM lens using f/8, 1/15th sec, and ISO 1600.

 

[Seachange79]

Here is my personal favorite of all the photos I took on 8 April 2024. It is a single photo captured at just the right moment through luck more than anything else. It best represents the awe inspiring beauty of Mother Nature at her best as she shines through the clouds with a view that is difficult to express in words. There are many composites I made from series of bracketed photos which were well thought out in advance and took a lot of complex mathematics and science into consideration, and they are spectacular in their own ways. But this single photo with very minimal post processing surpasses them all. I can't help but think what our distant ancestors tens of thousands of years ago must have thought when they gazed upwards at such a sight.

Photo captured with Sony a7C and Canon 400mm f/5.6L USM lens using f/8, 1/15th sec, and ISO 1600.

OMG Fantastic shot!! Where were you located?

[W5JCK]

OMG Fantastic shot!! Where were you located?

Thank you!

 

I was in my front yard in Everman, Texas, about 10 miles south of downtown Fort Worth. I set up two different 9 image brackets to take during the totality and was shooting the one with the longer shutter speeds. I was shooting as many bracketed sets of 9 images as I could before the MAX. After MAX I stopped shooting and enjoyed the totality with my eyes. This was a single photo from one of those brackets. I basically ignored it for over a week because of all the clouds, then a few days ago went through all 378 photos taken during totality and saw how amazing this photo was and decided to post process it. A VERY lucky shot. The clouds actually make the shot work!

[syam]

Great images here! My contribution:

 

Recorded from Granby, Quebec (Canada), with 3 minutes of totality.

 

The whole totality was recorded on Canon G50 camcorder (5500 of 8 megapixel frames, 4k@30) using 20x optical zoom, on a tripod. Using exposure compensations from -2EV to +2EV to cover a wider dynamic range. Post-processed in PIPP to remove the drift, then >1000 frames were averaged out using ImageMagic software to increase the signal to noise ratio and minimize the 8-bit color artifacts of the original frames. The innermost part (-2EV exposure) processed with AutoStakkert4 software using ~100 sharpest frames, to reveal finer details. Finally, the outer parts of corona were processed using clarity enhancement filter from Adobe Camera Raw, to reveal fainter details. The pre/after eclipse video was done through a telescope solar filter.

 

Total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 by SyamAstro (850,000 views - thank you!), on Flickr

[Jesse7Mak]

Our report from Carthage, New York.

 

My house is five miles from the path of totality.  To prepare for the event, I had my Meade 7” Mak set up with a full aperture Helios Solar Glass filter from Seymour Solar.  I also bought a pair of shade 14 welding glass from Phillips Safety Products with which I made a pair of shields to use with two pairs of Bushnell Elite Custom 7x26 compact binoculars.  Finally, we had three pairs of cardboard eclipse viewing glasses we saved from the 2017 eclipse we saw while living in Washington.

 

Here’s how I mounted those welding glass into shields we could then hold in front of the binoculars:

 

 

And, here is one in use:

 

 

These welding glass solar shields worked really well.  At 7x magnification, even some sunspots are visible.  I was able to get away with holding them in front of our binoculars because of their compact design, with the objectives next to each other.

 

Sadly, skies were overcast by totality.  I was tracking the sun with the telescope, and we saw first contact nicely, but the cloud cover only increased after that.  For the rest of the eclipse, we got better views through the binoculars, or just looking through the welding glass or the eclipse glasses.

 

The overcast did give a view different than the totality I saw under clear skies from Oregon in 2017.  We could actually see out from under the shadow of the moon, at all points of the horizon.  The overcast clouds were quite high.  We could tell there was a corona ring, but just barely.

 

We were all surprised by how little of the sun is necessary to produce daylight just before and just after totality.

 

The clouds were disappointing, but did give us a view of the shadow we’d have not seen otherwise.

[kfiscus]

I wanted to bump this Grandfather of the 2024 TSE threads before the sub-forum gets blocked.  It was fun looking back at early searches for viewing spots, later plans & problems, and then post-eclipse successes and failures.  Thank you to all that shared their photos, especially Jack (W5JCK).

[kfiscus]

^^^Correction- locked, not blocked.^^^