I live just south of Detroit and it says we will be having 99.51% coverage at max cover. I am apparently 30 minutes away from totality, but I am hearing MASSIVE traffic and crowds are heading south to see it.
Uh, If we are getting 99.51%, isn’t it almost going to be a total eclipse? Quite dark?
I have not yet experienced totality myself – really looking forward to April 8 – but again and again everyone has said that nothing comes close to actual totality. Even a 99% partial is … interesting. A total eclipse is fascinating. That’s because even the tiniest amount of sunlight peeping through in a partial is surprisingly bright.
For you it’ll be as dark as the seconds just before sundown for you. For those in the path of totality, it will be as dark as just after sundown; it doesn’t get really all that dark.
BUT: what does get dark is that circle up in the sky where the sun should be. That’s the most amazing and surprising thing about the two eclipses I’ve seen. To experience that, you must be in the path of totality. Or: you MUST be in the path - do it! You’re very close to this very rare event so if at all possible, go!
Have you tried the eclipse simulator?
My plan is to move like 5-10 minutes to get totality, but it sure looks very close to totality from where I am right now.
https://eclipse2024.org/eclipse_cities/statemap.html
Find your location. It brings up a timeline totality interactive chart.
For those in totality, it gets dark!
Wherever you may find yourself, make note of wildlife, especially birds. Birds become disoriented, will probably roost and go silent.
Looks somewhat dark. I am hearing that the traffic and crowds will be massive not far from us. We’ll likely stay and just go outside and look.
No. Outdoor, noontime lighting is around 100,000 lux. A 99.5% reduction from that is 500 lux. That’s roughly what you get in a supermarket–still quite bright. A bedroom with fairly typical lighting might only be 50 lux. Much dimmer, but not what you’d think of as dark. A total eclipse will reach about 5 lux: a 99.995% reduction. Though it is still not as dark as night, which is 0.5 lux (with a full moon) or less.
I highly recommend going out of your way to reach totality. Walk, bike, whatever.
The totality can be described but the experience really can’t. I went to the last one and it far exceeded my expectations. I’m lucky that the April 8th one is only a 4 hour drive from my house. Also, my company has a power plant that’s in the totality so I’m very familiar with the area and have a good place to watch from.
As above.
Sell your kids if you need to. Get down into the path of totality.
There are things in life where you experience something so totally wild and different that they stick with you forevermore.
Totality is one of these. 99.99% is not the same. That is just darkish.
Seeing the sun suddenly turn into a jet black disk ringed with the corona and magenta solar flares as everything else goes properly dark is an experience that stretches our brains. You don’t want to miss it.
The thing is, you can’t even properly see a partial eclipse. Even at 99.5%, you have use eclipse glasses if you don’t want to burn holes in your retina. So you can see the remaining sliver–and nothing else, because the brightness reduction is so great. About the only interesting thing is that shadows make cool crescent shapes (which you can see with the naked eye).
Whereas with a total eclipse, you can see it with the naked eye in all its glory, along with everything else in the world. I took this shot at the last one, but it looks better in real life:
Along with everything else, it makes apparent just how dynamic and irregular the sun is. It’s not just a bright circle in the sky.
You will see none of this with a 99.5% partial eclipse.
What did you use to take that?
The traffic will not be as bad as everyone says. That’s mostly because everyone is saying it, Lot of people will stay home because of the predictions of massive traffic. But also because a lot of people will get there well ahead of time. And there isn’t likely to be massive crowds because totality is spread out along a wide line, not in a single place. Even at the center line, it’s not likely to be crowded; the line is broad enough there won’t be crowds. So I say, go ahead and drive down there.
Now leaving after it’s over, that’s when the big traffic jams will be. So figure on staying for an hour or two afterward.
I was in totality of one a few years back. What I noticed is there was not much difference in looking around the land till it got near totality, something like 95%. That was noticeably darker and shadows gets weird. So to me there are 3 main stages any solar eclipse puts darkness in the sun, 95+% makes the land look different and 100% makes it dark.
The sun is almost exactly one half of a degree in arc. The picture above is pretty close to two degrees across. In old 35mm equivalent lens sizes you would want about a 500mm lens. Because 35mm format is so rectangular you need to work with the shorter edge to avoid disappointing cropping. Whatever format you have, scale appropriately. The corona isn’t all that bright. I seem to remember using about one second exposures. Auto exposure will almost certainly make a mess of it.
The corona extends a lot further than the pic shows. As @Dr.Strangelove says - it looks a lot better in real life. A camera can’t capture the immense dynamic range here. But bracketing the pictures can get stuff your eye can’t see. You need a very solid tripod, or better, a tracking mount. Last eclipse I bolted my medium format camera with a 500mm lens on top of a Celestron 8. The telescope just tracked. The time before I shot through the telescope using a focal length halver. So 1000mm onto 35mm film. Both times I was getting roughly f-5. But you can be sure there are much more reliable guides out there than my fading memory.
However, and I really mean this. Don’t put taking pictures forward of just experiencing it. This is an event where you could so easily get caught up in the technology and miss it.
Next time I go to one, if I do take pictures it will be setup to do it automatically ahead of time, and I’ll just let it rip. Even if it all dies and I get no useful results, there will be thousands of pictures taken of the event. The biggest part of the experience is just seeing it and experiencing it.
How about going east, then hire a boat and see it from lake Erie ?
I think people don’t quite realize two things- how bright natural sunlight actually is, and how sensitive our eyes are.
I found an article saying that sunlight is somewhere around 20,000 lumens. A 100 watt equivalent LED bulb puts out about 1500 lumens. We’re talking about an order of magnitude less light from the bulb, and yet a bulb like that would light up a room pretty brightly by most people’s estimation.
So a 99.51% outage would still put out almost 100 lumens, which is like everything being illuminated by a low-wattage incandescent bulb. Still pretty bright if our eyes adjust to it.
I was in the path of totality in 2017, and now the simulator shows I will experience 98.8% totality. My question is, will looking at that tiny sliver of sun (with glasses of course, I’m not stupid) show me anything cool, like solar flares, or something in the ring of fire that I wouldn’t normally notice?
In other words, will a 98.8% eclipse be its own kind of once in a lifetime experience?
That’s a good site. I’m too far to see it. 
I also like that it’s “owned and operated by eclipse2017.org.”
I was close to, but no in, the path of the recent annular eclipse. So somewhat less than 99% covered. Still fairly cool. Used my glasses from the 2017 eclipse. Some nice effects like the crescents on the ground under trees. The darkness wasn’t a big thing but still noticeable.
I was in the path of the 2017 one. Quite a bit different experience. If you can, go. Just chillax about the crowds. Wait a good while after the eclipse before leaving.
Nope. Even 99.9% is a “kind of cool, I’ll look up if I happen to be outside” kind of experience. As @Dr.Strangelove said, the glasses filter out everything except the crescent itself. No flares, just a crescent and black everywhere else. Really, the shadows are way more interesting than the sun itself.
Yeah, it’s again due to how sensitive our eyes are to different levels of light. When you see totality live, you see the black hole where the sun should be, the ring of fire, and flares and streams spreading out from it, seeming like halfway across the sky. The sky is a dark blue/purple, while the moon is just pitch black. Unless you play games with composite shots of different exposure levels and filters, photos make the sky and moon look the same black color, and you lose anything more than the ring immediately around the moon.
Here are a couple examples that are closer to what it really looks like. But even these are nothing like the experience of looking up and seeing it spread out in the sky over head. It cannot be described, and it is worth any traffic jam to experience at least once in your life.
