How many here are planning to view the eclipse on August 21?
I drove about an hour south to get in the middle of the path of totality (from the ~99% area I was coming from). I think it was worth it.
Even when there was just a sliver of a toenail of the sun still showing, it was still too bright to look at. Once totality hit, you could take the glasses off and look right at it. It was amazing.
As it started to get darker, it was really cool. I dunno if you've (the proverbial you, I know
you have, Tany) played with digitally altering images, but two things came to mine: brightness and color saturation... So, as it was getting "darker", it didn't look so much like someone was reducing the brightness of what I could see, but rather it was like the color saturation was gradually decreasing while the brightness didn't change much.
It wasn't like it looks when nighttime approaches and everything just gradually gets darker, everything just got less vivid and more grey-ish, while you could still see well with the level of light that was out.
Kinda hard to describe, but totally awesome and something I've never seen before.
When totality did hit, it did just get really dark like nighttime. A car was driving by and they had to turn on their headlights. It did look like a sunset in 360 with dark sky above. And the actual eclipse during totality looked just like the pictures on the internet. Big dark circle with a white halo around it.
I don't think it would have been the same at 99% - as I said, even when it was just a sliver, it was still yellow and still too bright.
That totality tho!
10 out of 10 - would do again.