Great American Eclipse 2017

Hello again~

You may or may not have heard of the eclipse that happened in North America, specifically coast to coast of the USA.  If you were anywhere near the path of shadow, it's all you've been hearing about for about six months!  We live in the path of totality so we had a great show to look forward to... without having to deal with traffic (and thank goodness for that -- 30 minutes after was nuts).  My husband took off because he knew how excited I was for this.

We ordered a solar filter for my little telescope early because I knew there'd be issues the closer to the date.  It safely arrived with plenty of time but ONE WEEK before the eclipse, I got an email from the shipper saying it couldn't be verified to meet the safety standards!  At that point, there weren't any verified items in stock, even assuming they could ship quickly.  So that meant we wouldn't be able to (safely) watch the eclipse through the 'scope after all.  I was so disappointed.  At least we were fully refunded for it and allowed to keep it.  We set it up with the telescope anyway so we could get pictures with our cell phones with no risk of blinding ourselves.

Our local libraries were giving away proper solar glasses like candy so I picked up two pairs of those so we could watch safely.  I modified them slightly by punching holes in the temples and stringing a piece of elastic through.  This made it so the darn things actually stayed on our heads!  For future reference, the solar glasses are very annoying if you have to wear regular glasses to get through life.

find the sunspots!

How exciting to see sunspots!  We were lucky to have a beautiful, though hot, day for viewing.  There were some concerns about incoming clouds, but they behaved themselves until after the eclipse.  Just a few stray cirrus once in a while.

so close

I loved watching the sun get eaten away by the moon! 

the diamond ring

Totality was so amazing!  It was my first time but my husband's second (he was a small fry on the Big Island in Hawaii for the eclipse in 1991).  We had a good two+ minutes of it (2 minutes, 28 seconds) and it was worth every moment.  It was so dark and the temperature dropped rapidly at that point.  We didn't have any birds freak out but the "evening bugs" started to sing.  My mother told me her cats gathered at the door and stared at her thinking it was time to be fed!  Since it's safe to look at the sun without the filters during totality, we took our glasses off and the one off the telescope and got to see solar flares and the ring of fire and everything; it was wonderful!

receding

The clouds held off for the end too though we had to hurry and get our grill ready before they moved in with rain in the evening!  I mean, what's an eclipse without some grilled ribeye?  According to my husband, a wasted eclipse ahaha.

edible sol and luna

And of course I had to make my sugar cookies!  The icing was a little weird for these; a bit too runny.  They still taste like a million calories each though. :D

This was such a fantastic experience and shall be going down as one of my favorite memories ever!  We are also close to where the 2024 eclipse will happen so assuming nothing changes in the next seven years, maybe I'll get to see another totality!  For further fun, NOAA has some great images and videos of the shadow crossing the US here (I am not sure how long this link will stay active).

I will be fixing the images on my blog shortly.  Photobucket went off the deep end and has decided to charge FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS for 3rd party hosting.  Lol, no thank you.  Please forgive the mess until I can get the images moved!