I bought one good camera filter; only one because a) they’re not inexpensive & b) when am I going to be able to use 'em again?
B&H had some of the cheapies on sale on Mon so I picked up a few. I happened to walk past the door & saw something under my car in the driveway. Yup, my filters came & were in a box wedged under the middle of my car. Ummm, I guess that prevents porch pirates (which haven’t been an issue here)??? Of course if I didn’t go out until after dark I probably would have backed out over the cardboard box & crushed them. Thanks, DHL!
My plan is to have one camera w/ wide-angle lens & intervolameter - basically taking a photo every x seconds sitting on a tripod & then stack them to get a series of the sun progressively disappearing & then reappearing again (like this) & then the longer lenses to shoot totality & Baily’s beads
I lived briefly in the Carbondale region a while back. There is really not much there except the college, and I suspect it’s going to be a nightmare, although they probably learned lessons from the 2017 eclipse.
As for me, I have decided not to do “Totality or bust!” myself. I have a bad feeling about traveling, and the weather forecast, and that phrase “trust your gut” sure applies here. That won’t stop me from enjoying what I can here!
Our first near disaster. I picked up our rental car (Ford Expedition Max, seats 8); the plan being three of us take that up, the other two take our car and pick our daughter up in Albany.
My husband, was starting to put things in our car, and found that the remote wouldn’t open the lift gate, nor unlock the doors. Nor START THE CAR.
We didn’t think it was the battery because the lights worked, and the car chirped in dismay as I walked away from it with the key in hand.
Then the plan became that we’d pare down on the nonessentials and all go in the rent-a-tank.
I called AAA in the vain hope it was the battery. They arrived after 2+ hours… and sure enough, that was the problem. 200 bucks later, and we have a working vehicle.
On the lighter side: we went to Wegmans for groceries, and they had “eclipse cookies”. Just a, large sugar cookie with icing and sprinkles, with a, chocolate disc in the middle that says “solar eclipse 4/8/24” or something. Of course I bought one for each of us.
Get thee jumper cables. They’re relatively inexpensive & can save your hide, especially if stranded out somewhere. You might get a stranger willing to lend their car to jump yours but w/o cables, you’re still outta luck. It would have at least saved you two hours of worrying about Plan B today
We have some, somewhere; I’ll have to make sure we have them in the car. We could have jumped it ourselves, but we really weren’t sure that was the problem. The mechanic was doing stuff for several minutes before he said that was the issue; I was sure he was going to say we were out of luck (as other times, they’ve gotten the car started Weirton l within 2 minutes)…
Also, that would have just gotten it started, then we’d have had to get it somewhere to get a new battery; we could not have waited until the morning, without needing to jump it again… AAA brought one along, so all in all it was a lot less hassle.
My friend leaving for here Monday morning, which ought to be a half-hour drive, and, we hope, arriving here not more than two or at worst two and a half hours later (there is no plausible way for her to get here that doesn’t bring her through a traffic chokepoint. No, she can’t come the night before and stay over; I asked.) Both of us, leaving from here to a destination which ought usually to be a 40 minute drive, driving through what I very much hope will be a less congested area with a choice of lesser chokepoints to be made on the day, and hoping to arrive not more than two hours later, overall well before the first hint of partial.
Supplies of food, water, devices, fuel, paper maps and GPS planned out.
I’ve been wondering what we do all day especially since the weather is pretty suspect. We decided to watch the eclipse, assuming that it can be seen, at an elephant sanctuary. That way, if the eclipse is a bust, we’ll still be able to feed and wash some elephants.
As to this, you raise an EXCELLENT point I’d been thinking about …
Assuming perfect weather for everyone…
It’s obvious what we’ll all be doing during totality: gazing up in wonderment. Modern American attention spans, even my stunted one, can handle 4 minutes on one interesting-enough topic.
It’s the partial phase I’m wondering about. Where I am it’s ~1h20m long. The last few / couple(?) minutes where we’re setting up for diamond ring, Bailey beads, etc., is pretty obviously important.
What to do or watch once first contact is past and there’s an hour-plus of ??? going on? I think it’s an hour-plus of frankly not very much.
This is my first TSE and I’m seriously stoked to be here in an optimal location, but I’ve lived through a few partials and most of it / them were meh. Distinctly odd, but predictably odd and therefore obvious and therefore frankly boring.
So what can / should any of us do or watch during the increasing partial phase to enhance the experience??? THAT is the big question.
Likewise, the post-totality partial phase is slightly longer. After the first minute-ish of transition past diamond ring, what else is there? Quitting watching then seems like leaving a baseball game in the 5th inning. IOW dumb and disrespectful. But what else to do, knowing all the big action has already occurred?
Any eclipse pros care to weigh in on my misconceptions or provide your thoughts on how we each max-perform our experience of the partial phase(s)?
I want to shoot something like this. I know how to do it & have the stacking software to do it but my concern is how long do I wait knowing we have a long drive home & need to irk the next day…& then turn around Wed nite for another 4 hr drive so I don’t wanna get home too late.
PS thanks for teaching me about the break code; didn’t know it existing til I saw it in my reply to your post
Question for glasses wearers. Where do you put the eclipse glasses in relation to your regular glasses?
Fort Worth weather hasn’t changed the past couple of days - 25% chance of rain @ 1PM, 75% cloud cover. Does that mean 75% of the area will be clouded over? Only 3/4 of a layer of clouds?
During the 2017 eclipse, my friend’s husband had had a good app that told what to look for during different stages of the eclipse. I’ve downloaded Solar Eclipse Timer and am hoping it has similar if not better functionality.
ABC is airing Eclipse Across America starting at 2 PM EDT on its main network. They did something similar in 2017; I think I still have that one in the DVR.
