Trying to start a thread here for people who went close to the edge of the path. No specific limitations, but did anyone have less than about 90 seconds of annularity? How were the Baily’s Beads?
Here’s my report and video, from the northwest side of New Braunfels, Texas
I’ll start with the link to the video first:
https://m.youtube.co...h?v=ke64Bjx6O60
Location was the New Braunfels Christian Academy. (Not our first choice!)
Full story:
I planned to watch the eclipse from a location between Fredericksburg and New Braunfels, Texas. (I live in Dallas) I wanted to watch from a location that would see some annularity, but was close enough to the edge to get a good display of Baily’s beads. I had some family and friends meeting me (coming from Houston), and my friends were bringing their young children so a location with restrooms was preferable, and something for the kids to do. I scouted out various locations using Xavier’s map. We ended up agreeing to meet at a park with a playground in New Braunfels with about 42.8 seconds of lunar limb corrected annularity.
We started setting up under partly cloudy skies, but most of the clouds were to the south. First contact had the sun in the clear, but not long after that the clouds to the south started moving in the sun’s direction, and some other clouds formed right above our heads, and began to cover the sun. These did not seem like the type of clouds that would burn off with the dropping temperatures although I’m not an expert in the subject. The clouds were also moving slowly, and the rest of the group started getting nervous. We started questioning whether or not we should stay or moved to a different location. It was looking clearer to the west and north west. We were hesitating because we were already mostly set up and it would take time to take the stuff down drive to the new location and reset up. The eclipse had already been in progress for about 15 minutes. We were also concerned that the drive would still not bring us into clear skies.
After a brief discussion, we decided to take the gamble and leave. I told my friends and family to put to location destinations into their mapping programs. The first was a school about 15 minutes away and the second one was a picnic area about 15 minutes away from the school farther to the north west. The plan was to stop at the school, assess the situation and decide if we needed to move on. We got into our cars and headed toward the school When we arrived, we got out the car briefly and looked at the cloud cover. There were still some clouds around, but it was noticeably better than the first location. After a brief discussion, we decided to stay. We found a location at the front of the school and quickly set up our equipment. By this point, the sign was about halfway covered.
I was using a 3 inch refractor at 56x magnification with a 1.5° field of view. I was also using an 8 inch reflector to project the sons image onto a whiteboard. The projected image was about 10 inches across. (thank you to my dad and my friend Ben, for helping set up the whiteboard.) I also was doing video and photography with a combination of a camera lens and teleconverter that reached up to about 1200 mm. None of my equipment tracks the sun, so I had to make sure the sun stayed at or near the center of the field of view.
We looked over toward the school building and noticed thousands of eclipse crescents on the walls of the school! There was a white building about 130 feet long and about 10 feet tall with trees in front of it. The entire wall was filled with projected eclipse crescents. It was amazing!
As the eclipse progressed towards annularity, we noticed the light level changing. As usual, it remained rather bright, but the glare was going away, and it was starting to take on a metallic look. The crescent started to wrap around the edge of the moon as annularity was approaching. We made final adjustments to our equipment, including making sure the sun was near the center of the fields of view.
Rather suddenly, we noticed Baily’s beads forming at about the 230 position on the sun. For more than a minute and a half, we watched through our telescopes cameras, and at the large projected image of the sun to see the beads progress along the limb of the sun. We all shouted excitedly as we watched the motion of the moon in real time. Beads would disappear and new ones would form. The last of the third contact Baileys beads seem to linger longer than the first ones formed. According to Xavier’s map, there was 47.7 seconds of lunar limb corrected annularity predicted for that location. However, I’m not really sure how much annularity we really got, if any. Everyone was switching between taking brief views through the telescopes and looking at the projected image, as well as the strange lighting effects around us. There was no one watching the beads-annularity-beads sequence constantly.
After the annularity, we had more time, and took more pictures of the crescents on the wall of the school. It was lunchtime, so we took a few last glimpses of the regressing partial eclipse packed up our things and left to go have a celebratory meal.
The rest of my trip consisted of more visiting with those close family and friends, a hike in a park in the Texas hill country, and 2 dark sky star gazing sessions. Overall it was a great trip, showing that, although the eclipse should be the main focus of eclipse travel, the other activities and people are nearly as important.
It’s doubtful that I will chase an annular eclipse internationally, but I am very much looking forward to the sunrise annular in western Kansas in June 2048.