I agree with the rest of your post, but I think the baseball teams’ idea is that the game will start after the eclipse is over, so people can stay to watch the game. By game’s end, nearby traffic will have had nearly 3 hours to disperse, so those in the stadium who stay to watch the game would just be dealing with the normal after-a-big-game traffic issues.
That’s what I was referring to, although now that I think about it, there could be traffic getting into the stadium as well.
I think seeing the eclipse in a ballpark would be a fine way to do it. Hearing others oohing and aahing can add to the experience. Yes there’ll be normal game traffic before and after, but that should be separate from the eclipse traffic. The eclipse traffic after it’s over will be massive in the urban area of an MLB game. Or even MiLB. After the 3 hours of the game, much of the traffic will have dispersed. But there might still be some close traffic.
Switching topics, my solar filters for my binoculars arrived.
They are a little tricky to fold to fit the binoculars well, while also taking care not to scratch or bend the solar film or tear the cardboard. The cardboard tears surprisingly easily. They’ll be okay for solar viewing.
But now I’m thinking about incorporating them with an extra set of lens caps. If I carefully cut the extra lens caps — cut a large circle out from the center of each lens cap, and also cut the cardboard from around the solar filters, I should be able to insert the solar filter film into the hollow lens caps, and that should fit snugly and better than the cardboard binoculars solar filters. That should be better to use.
Such ready-made solutions are available to buy, but the ones I’ve seen cost upwards of $100, even $200.
The back-roads area I’m intending to head for is within an hour’s drive of two major cities, one to the east and one to the west, about equidistant.
But both of those cities are themselves within totality; as is a smaller city in the area. While I expect some people may leave the city in order to get to what they think is a better spot to see natural effects [ETA: although the cities in question also have a lot of back yards, parks, etc; it’s not as if people in them don’t otherwise see leaves or birds], I doubt there will be huge numbers who both do so and also go far enough from the cities to wind up in the area I’m thinking of. Especially since a lot of them would be driving into an area with somewhat shorter totality than they’d get by staying home – I’m aiming to get to two minutes or more, but not to get all the way to maximum length; partly because I’d expect getting to maximum length also to get me into much more traffic.
Much of the area I’m aiming for is open farm country, with patches of trees but mostly cleared fields; and it’s mostly close to flat. Some of the back roads have no shoulders wide enough to pull off on, but a lot of them do, and some relatively-back roads have occasional public pulloffs. Entries to farm lanes may also be accessible; the entries are usually at least partially within the public right-of-way, and on any given day the farmers may not be using them; and some business parking lots may be at least partly available, especially if we go in and buy something. Or maybe some people – farmers or not – will have signs out ‘park here, $X’ and as long as X isn’t too high I’d be willing to go for that if the shoulders do turn out to be crowded; but I suspect that in that area the shoulders won’t be all that crowded.
I saw Southwest has a couple of flights along the path of totality that they were advertising for a watch party. Assuming the plane takes off on time & you’re seated in a window seat on the correct side it might be a cool way to watch; otherwise, you may only get to look at some guy’s bald spot as he’s staring out the window.
As dedicated eclipse chasers my group will be as far away from other people as possible. We want DARK skies during totality, not idiots letting off fireworks (or worse still, using cameras without the flash disabled). Many of my group will be serious astronomy photographers and any unnatural light will completely ruin their pictures. We will be outside Torreon, Mexico.
There’s a town there named Dinamita. I chuckled at that name.
Dinamita, Durango, Mexico.
Just got this email from ebay (edited down)
We’re reaching out to you because an item you purchased may have been recalled or pose a safety hazard. We recommend that you stop using this product. If you have questions about the item(s), please reach out to the seller or the manufacturer. Item details are listed below.
…
Item details: 281832783127 - Solar Eclipse Glasses BBC/ISO123120CE Approved x 2 pairs. Star Gazing Live.
I’ve contacted the seller for a refund (bought back in October). As it turns out we won’t be making the trip from the UK. Money, work and wife doesn’t want to go anyways.
Pretty much the only safety hazard with eclipse glasses is UV/light filtration. Dunno how they finally figured out there’s an issue. I hope folks retinas weren’t injured for the annular and I reckon I wasn’t going to “test” them myself by looking at the Sun.
If I had my small Celestron scope I’d have the #14 welders glass I bought for my first TSE, whatever paper/mylar glasses I didn’t give away in Bucharest for my last and of course the filter for the scope which definitely fits the tube firmly but all that’s back in New York.
As I said, I’ve no clue how to safety check eclipse glasses, esp. for the UV filter. My next pair will definitely be name brand like Celestron and glass if possible.
Be careful! Suppliers of safe glasses (I guess repeating a link by bullit 5 days ago)
The seller got back to me quickly. Says ebay did them wrong by pulling the listing and sending out the warning and that these are AAS approved.
I told the seller it sounds like ebay kind of screwed them esp. if they’ve stock on hand.
I’ll go to Toolstation and get some #13 glass (I do think #14 is a bit dark but that is just my opinion)
eta: And leave it at that. Not worth the hassle of dealing with ebay. “Hey that product you bought - the one that can really mess with your eyes? It’s not good. Talk to the seller. Bye!”
Just saw a clip of an incongruously cheerful weather guy talking about the chances of clear skies on April 8 in this part of the country. He was talking specifically about the Canadian Maritimes which is not where I am, but he also mentioned that the first two weeks of April are statistically the cloudiest of the entire year throughout the east. For the Maritimes, records show the most southerly parts have a 60-70% probability of cloud cover, while further north that rises to a truly dismal 70-80%. I’m bummed, but my area might be slightly better than that.
Now that’s a threat I had never considered. Who would think to spend their precious eclipse time doing such a thing? Where do we find such rocket surgeons?
Most folks could not figure out how to turn their phone flash off if you gave them 2 hours, access to Google, and motivated them by threatening to kill their family if they failed.
Idjits are eternal.
A great semi-relevant story from my youth. …
Back in the 1970s I was in high school. Instamatic cameras using 126 cartridge film and flash cubes were state of the art consumer photography. Pro’s had 35mm SLRs, but the hobbyist use of gear that sophisticated was still (mostly) in the future. Some folks had 35mm rangefinder cameras like Leicas, Rolleis, and such, but not many. Strobe flash units were few and far between in ordinary folk’s camera bag.
In So Cal a fun thing for us airport brats to do was grab a plane and go fly around Disneyland at 9pm when they put on a pretty darn good fireworks show 7 nights a week all year round. Fireworks are pretty cool from a slow- and low-flying plane. The bursts are still well below you, but you have a great unobstructed seat to the full 3D effect. You just miss out on the music and the crowd.
Disneyland was/is roughly circular with a large back lot on the north side. They launched from the back lot. Anyhow, you’d get in position a few minutes early orbiting the park, with the goal of being north of the park at first shot so the entirety of the park was backdrop to the fireworks from your POV.
The fireworks would launch and the entire park would erupt in a sea of flashbulbs. Thousands upon thousands of them. Which kept firing for the full 15 minutes. I’m not sure whether there was more flashing in the sky or on the ground. It was a hell of a show.
Think about that: using an expensive consumable flashbulb with an effective range of maybe 10 feet trying to take a flash picture of something already incandescent a half mile-plus away against a dark sky background. Over and over for 15 minutes.
So much concentrated ignorance. Sigh.
And all you had to do in order not to use the flash was to pop the cube out. Which everybody who had one knew how to do, because they needed to be changed after every four flashes.
While “camera” is inside “media center”, that’s not where the camera settings are. They’re, somewhat logically, in “settings” (three clicks to get into settings, then eight to get to the camera settings, then another couple to say that yes I mean the camera not specifically the video.) Then another two clicks get me to flash. Which, I see, is set to “auto”; sensibly enough for the way I use the camera, which is very much Dummies Snapshot Mode. Clicking on that gets me the option to set it to “off”.
Makes a note to do that on the morning of the 8th, just in case I decide I want to take pictures, though I probably won’t. All of which did take a lot less than two hours (and neither Google nor threats were necessary); but definitely more of a hassle than popping out a flashlight cube.
Yeah. The thing I like about the flashbulbs/cubes story is that the people had to actively reload every shot/4 shots and kept doing so.
And now, back to the current future …
What the hell device are you trying to take pictures with?
On my Android phone the flash control is one of the peripheral icons superimposed on the shot viewfinder. Tap the flash icon that shows your current setting and 3 icon-choices appear: Never flash, auto-flash, and always flash. Tap tap done. And because the icon showing the flash mode in effect is visible on every shot there’s not much (good) excuse for using the wrong setting unintentionally.
Chosen because it’s highly water resistant; it’s highly shock resistant; and it doesn’t take much space in my pocket. The combination of which means that I can carry it with me through a work day, during which I may get soaking wet or bang it into something; or, being a klutz, drop it onto a hard surface; plus which, its size means that I can still fit all the other things I need to have in my pockets and also that it doesn’t hamper my movement by digging into my legs.
I need a phone I can carry because my health is shaky and I might possibly have to call for help from a field. It needs to work as a phone; anything else is a bonus.
On the camera viewfinder I see, left to right at the bottom, Gallery/Take/Video. Nothing’s superimposed. But thanks for info; most people’s cameras may well show it that way.
That looks vaguely like my beloved Motorola Razr flip phone, which I reluctantly had to abandon because the carrier moved to some newfangled cellular technology that the phone didn’t support.
I’m not going to waste my precious eclipse time taking photos, when much more experienced people than I will be taking much better photos than I ever could.
I am going to bring some 10x25 binoculars. I got a piece of solar filter film that I will (in a manner yet to be determined) place in front of the binoculars during the partial phase and will remove during totality. I also have a 9x50 finder scope that I can remove from my telescope. I was playing around with it this morning to see if it’s worth bringing. It does produce a better image than the binoculars, but it’s bigger, heavier and more fragile. Also because the eyepiece is at a right angle to the scope, it’s very hard to aim. I spent about 10 minutes fiddling with it this morning before I could even get the sun in view. So I don’t think I’m going to bring it.
This model appears to be off the market; but later versions are available.
One thing to watch for: this phone appears to also be designed for high-security uses; and my version, at least, can’t download any apps it didn’t come with. And it came with very few. So depending on what you do with your phone it may not work for you; and even if you mostly want to make phone calls you’re occasionally going to find yourself dealing with somebody who wants you just to scan the thingamabob or click on the link they sent and my phone doesn’t do that. It does have a browser and email app, but the screen’s so small that, for my eyes at least, they’re not worth using. It is possible to text on it, but difficult because, flip phone numerical keyboard.
Thanks for the info. Not to digress too much about phones, but I feel more comfortable getting my phone from my own carrier, particularly since even though I haven’t had a contract with them for many years, I somehow always manage to finagle a free phone. The last I looked – and I’m sure probably still true today – all the phones they offer were/are smartphones. That’s how I wound up with a smartphone. When I whined about their network protocol change that obsolesced my beloved flip phone, they sent me a free Samsung phone to shut me up.
I’m seeing the eclipse at the festival in Burnet TX. Since it’s getting close, I’ve been starting to get mildly stressed about when the tickets are going to arrive in the mail. Some festivals send the tickets at the very last minute, which drives me crazy, especially since I’m flying there a few days before the event. So I was happy to get an email last Friday with a tracking number, showing it was in Los Angeles. On Saturday it was in San Francisco, less than 50 miles from me, so it should be here Monday, right? On Monday it still showed it in SF without an “out for delivery” message. Hm.
Today it is in Chicago. WTF, post office?
Oooh, thanks for the reminder to check the status of my filter. USPS now states it’s been sitting on my porch for the past 5 hrs because no delivery person knows how to ring a bell. Only took 5 days to go < 50 miles. 
*It’s a Haida 20stop 100x100, which fits in my Nisi holder. Now I just need to remember to take the Nisi kit with my as I much prefer the Tiffen set & therefore, that is what’s normally in my camera bag. (<-- Photographer technikalspeak) I’m *thinking about getting another one camera so I can run on timelapse & use one however I want but don’t know that I can mentally justify two high stop filters that I’m not going to have much other use for anytime in the foreseeable future # of years.