Solar Eclipse 2017: The Great American Eclipse  -  Eclipse

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After a four hour recon and a final check of the weather, we decided on a location approximately one mile north of the line of totality - High Falls County Park between Salem and Walhalla, SC.  We arrived at 8:00am and began setting up our gear.  The weather was sunny, with a stray cloud here and there.

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As the eclipse approached, a steady stream of people arrived until the park was nearly full. A few high clouds were threatening from the north, but never came close to blocking our view.  The skies to the south and directly overhead stayed 100% clear, offering us a perfect view of the developing eclipse.  I manned the computer and the Lunt Hydrogen Alpha scope, while dad interacted with the curious on-lookers and tried to keep meddling kids away from the gear.  First contact was observed at 1:08pm and I took the following picture shortly thereafter:

There was an impressive line of sunspots (bright white in the hydrogen alpha picture above) near the middle of the sun's surface and another nice group at 12 o'clock.  Here are some pictures of them in hydrogen alpha and white light:

The sunspots in white-light captured by the Meade LX-200

The larger group in hydrogen alpha

The smaller group in hydrogen alpha

From first contact, it would be about an hour and a half before totality, but the time flew by pretty fast.  Once it reached about 95%, an eerie, metallic dimness set in.  Shadows became distorted and the temperature cooled, offering us temporary relief from the blisteringly hot day.  And then it went dark.  For the first time, we could look directly at the sun without protective glasses and the event didn't disappoint.  I tried to think of words to describe what it looked liked.  I've seen a thousand pictures like the ones below, but no words capture how mesmerizing seeing a total eclipse in person feels.  It's alien.  Your brain doesn't quite know what to do with it.  It's as if a giant hole was punched in the daytime sky. It was 2:37 in the afternoon and there was a black round spot where the sun should have been.  And the corona was ghostly.  Here's my best picture of what it looked like:

Dad took pictures of the corona with his camera and I decided to take the filter off of the Meade 8" scope and see what happened.  I figured I'd either capture some really good shots, or fry a $1,000 camera... Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good - here are some of the results:

The flares that were visible in H-A were visible through the scope without a filter.

Flares and prominences in true color.

The "diamond ring" picture.

A bigger diamond ring.

The total eclipse lasted 2 minutes and 37 seconds and ended with a spontaneous roar of applause and cheers from the few hundred people who had just shared the experience. We continued to take pictures for another 45 minutes, then it was time to pack up and get home.  Here are some of the last pictures I took:

The waning eclipse in hydrogen alpha.

The sunspot group re-emerged.

The last shot I took in white-light.

And that was it.  We packed up and hit the road at around 3:30 - as the eclipse was officially coming to an end in the Upstate of SC.  I got home around 8:00pm and started processing the pictures to see what I had.  Dad forwarded his pictures and we were please to capture a couple of unexpected and rewarding shots.  While I was busy capturing all the hi-res glamour shots from above, Dad took a lot of varying exposures with his D7000 and produced the coolest nerdy shots below:

The first nerd shot is an intentionally over-exposed shot intended to capture the "earth-shine" glowing face of the moon.  To the un-aided eye during totality, the moon looks totally black, but a little sunlight is reflecting off the earth and back towards the moon.  This illuminates the moon slightly, and with a little photoshop magic, you can see the "face" on the moon.

Another cool thing that happens during totality is that the sky gets dark enough to see stars and planets.  I've seen all of the planets (including Pluto...) at night, but one planet that's difficult to see is Mercury.  It never strays too far from the sun and is usually washed out in the ambient light at dusk and dawn.  The eclipse offers an opportunity to see it and Dad captured this picture:

To the left and slightly above the sun is the star Regulus.  At the time, we mistook this for Mercury.  Only after looking it up online, did we realize our mistake.  Carefully reviewing our pictures, we discovered dad had captured Mercury below and to the left of the sun.

One final note regarding the picture above.  The proximity of Regulus to the sun reminded me of a famous experiment conducted in 1919, which made Albert Einstein a household name.  Although Regulus seems to be exactly one degree away from the sun (twice as far as the sun is wide), it is actually a little closer than it appears.  One prediction of Einstein's General Relativity is that mass "bends" the space-time around it.  Think of it as a fat guy sitting on a large mattress.  The depression created by him in the mattress will cause marbles to roll towards him and even orbit around him if moving in the right direction and speed initially.  That's an over-simplification, but fairly acceptable model of how gravity actually works.  Einstein predicted that the "dent" in space around the sun would cause light from distant stars to bend around the sun, which is exactly what Arthur Eddington proved during a solar eclipse on May 29, 1919.  Absent this effect, Regulus would appear slightly closer to the sun - about a third of an arc-second to be precise.  My Meade LX200 scope is almost sensitive enough to to detect this.  Matter of fact, had Regulus been half as close to the sun as it was, I could have measured the distortion in it's path during the eclipse.

That's all for this installment of Zero Latitude - here's a final shot of me and Dad at the end of the day.  If you missed this eclipse, you'll have another shot in 2024.