RichKenn Loc: Merritt Island, FL

I finally found an old pic of an annular eclipse. We were on an Indian reservation northeast of Reno, NV. It cost us $5 to park in the desert and take a picture.

(Download)

profbowman Loc: Harrisonburg, VA, USA

In the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia (USA)ss, the 2017 solar eclipse was only a partial one. So, I made a pin-hole camera with a large pin-hole (a diamond 1/2 inch on a side [23 mm]). This works as long as the focal length of the camera is much greater than the size of the hope. At 15 feet (5 m), that criteria was met in my setup. The photo below shows a friend of Elsie’s and mine s when she came to look at my setup. The crescent-shaped Sun was clearly visible on our vinyl siding.

In the 30+ years that I taught physics and astronomy to college students, I observed two partial solar eclipses, one annular one, and one total solar eclipse. The total eclipse occurred over the southeastern part of the USA when I was a college student in Virginia on March 7, 1970.

That experience in 1970 was amazing. We had stopped at a school in a small town/village with farms nearby. The chickens definitely crowed as we entered and came out of totality. We did not check with any farmers to see if they laid any premature eggs. I was surprised that it was not darker than it was. The street lights had come on, but it was far from totally dark. The Sun;s corona does shed significant light

Attached are photos from film showing totality, the diamond ring effect, and Bailey’s beads (the Sun shining between mountains on the Moon just before and just after totality. --Richard

jcboy3

As others have pointed out, the 2023 eclipse is an annular eclipse (the moon doesn't completely block the sun) while the 2024 eclipse is a total eclipse. What is also cool is that the eclipse paths intersect at Uvalde TX.

We are already making plans. In 2017 we went to Cody WY. Skies had wispy clouds, but it was still amazing. I used a star tracker to follow the path of the sun, and pulled the filter off when the sky went to total eclipse. What is truly amazing about the eclipse is to watch the shadow move over the landscape. You can't see this if you are trying to shoot the eclipse. So a tracker to keep the pointing and a timelapse shutter trigger plus bracketing will capture the eclipse. If you are with a group, it's also interesting to photograph them as they watch the eclipse; the responses are very photographic.

We used the 2017 eclipse as the kick off for a 3-week tour of National Parks in the west. We plan to hit a number of places starting from South Texas, but while there I want to also go over to South Padre Island.