So far, we’re heading up I-65 and it’s not bad. Not really much slower than normal —just a little choke point near Lafayette, and the rest is good. Seven years ago, heading up from TN and meeting up with Carbondale traffic in the pouring rain was horrendous. Took us like 12 hours to get home.
My wife and I watched it from our back porch in Bloomington, IN. We slipped off our eclipse glasses once the sun disappeared completely and saw the totality.
It may have been, hands down, one of the most awe-inspiring things I’ve seen in my 59 years.
It truly is. Every chance I’ll have in life, I’ll make sure to get out to a total eclipse. I’m so glad we pulled the kids from school to see this. (And so are they.) Core memories.
Exhausted but joyful. Our 60% cloud cover was all thin cirrus clouds, and they hardly made a difference. Totality was only for a minute and a half where we were, but it was enough. My wife and my wife’s friend had to be talked into coming to the totality zone rather than staying at the house where it would have been maybe 96% of totality, but everyone was glad they hadn’t missed it.
Me happy.
Cool. My kid and her family will be driving back from Indy.
7 yrs ago it took us a few hrs to make it about 45 minutes up I57 in S IL to Effingham. Got off and toured the cornfields.
I’m just south of Fort Wayne, 99.99% totality. I was going to take a quick road trip south to get into totality but my mom is in hospice care and I didn’t feel right being away from her. So I settled for my back porch. Got to see the diamond ring effect so that was pretty cool. All my solar porch lights came on as did all the street lights. And I got a sunburn…
In Georgetown, Texas, north of Austin, east of Burnet.
For most of the eclipse this is what we were looking at. Often the clouds were thick enough to not see anything. Even at the clear times, the light was still too diffused to get crescent shadows.
This is what totality looks like. Shot on my phone through some disposable glasses. I think the weird pattern in the black regions is a super closeup of the blackout lenses.
This is a wide image of totality. The sun is blown out, but the sky cleared enough to see planets at about 4 and 10 o’clock. You’ll probably have to click through to the full sized image, and then wipe dust off your screen, until you see the two pieces of dust that won’t clear away. Those I think are Venus and Jupiter.
My town was 99% and had a cloudy forecast. We drove half an hour and the sky was nearly cloudless, until twenty minutes before totality when clouds started to concern. There were a few cirrus clouds near the sun when it went total, and you couldn’t see Jupiter or Venus that well. But we got a great view of the eclipse, corona and ring. Everything went 9pm dark for a couple minutes but not pitch black. No flashing waves of light or howling dogs. But it was really cool to see it; beautiful and fascinating. Well worth the drive. Traffic was much better than expected and we even got a good free parking spot and a comfortable table right on the beach! Not sure I’d fly to Mazátlan for it, but very pleased I saw it and that the clouds behaved themselves. No great pictures though. 
Just a few thin high clouds at Mt Magazine (worth it even when there is no eclipse) Hang glide area was great — people but plenty of empty space. Saw darkening approach across the valley. Saw corona, prominence (near the “bottom”), Jupiter and Venus. No wildlife oddness noted. Dogs did not react unusually.
Brian
Processed to bring out the structure in the Corona (and the dust on my sensor):
Technical question: why, when I excitedly took my extremely quick amateur pictures with my cheap phone – because stupidly I was in a hurry leaving home and brought nothing better with me – that totality showed up on the picture as a glowing white disk instead of the type of pic that proper astrophotograhers take. I assume that the POS camera was saturated by the corona, because in real life it looked just like that picture above.
Most likely because the camera is choosing the “wrong” exposure. It thinks you are taking a full-lit photo, so it is over exposing to compensate. Which blows out the corona.
I had the computer take a series of exposures, over a very wide exposure range. I should be able to do an “HDR” image stack, with them, but it will have to wait until I get back home.
That huge red prominence must have been the same one I saw. Again, it’s a huge loop of plasma going out into space and back again-several Earths could fit inside it.
Here’s a good one I took of it:
My photos didn’t turn out, but we made it to Toledo barely in time. Abandoned my first choice of viewing due to traffic jam on US-23 would up racing through the streets of Toledo and parked in a lot. We saw maybe 2 or 2 1/2 minutes of totality. Bucket list no more.
A million kelvins. Way hotter than the surface of the Sun. Why is it even there? (stuff for another thread so end of hijack).
Beauty pic, man.
And that even better. Every TSE photo isn’t like a clock, yet with the prominences you can often look and say, “Yeah that’s the one in 2024”
The skies in Dripping Springs, TX worked out perfectly for us! Pretty heavy cloud cover all morning. Leading up to totality, we had perfect visibility and no visibility and everything in between. But for all of totality, that patch of sky was totally clear and we had an amazing view the entire time. The prominence looked like a tiny bright red dot once we took our eclipse glasses off. I totally forgot to look for cool shadows, etc. and the many dogs near us didn’t react, but the cheers and gasps from the people celebrating with us were wonderful to hear.
I had the same and quickly decided to let NASA do it better and just enjoy the moment. Either that or I have photographic evidence that the eclipse was fake!
Weather was wonderful in Vincennes, IN and the eclipse was in a clear sky. Wonderful experience and, while my first trip in 2017 was absolutely worth it, this one just went better in every way: Less of a drive down, a steak dinner at the hotel, the town we went to was less crowded but still had plenty to see until TSE time, perfect weather and (perhaps best improvement) 4.5hr drive home instead of 13 hours!
The eclipse made me realize how puny we humans are compared to the earth, sun, and moon.
That is an amazing photo!