On the Road Again - Eclipse 2024

No, sunglasses will not be enough protection!!! Eclipse glasses should be available for sale in lots of places because the eclipse is so popular and publicized. You only need the glasses during the partial stage before and after totality, but totality is the real show. I wouldn't bother with shooting with your phone except during totality. There will be millions of images available of the non-totality portion of this eclipse. Are Your Solar Eclipse Glasses Fake? Here’s How to Check

So I've got the glasses, and we could drive up tomorrow, but should we? Would we run into jammed roads and huge crowds, something we usually try to avoid? We'd be on Rt. 91 in Vermont around Barton.--Percy

All I can say is I would take the chance. My sister and brother-in-law drove a couple hundred miles ti see the 2017 eclipse and they were really glad they did and they watched it through the sunroof of their car. I have never heard anyone who has seen totality, say they wish they had missed it. Everyone who I have talked to, said it was one of the most memorable moments of their life.We had a beautiful sunny day here yesterday and today is pretty nice so far, and tomorrow is still being predicted as partly cloudy. I don't know if partly cloudy is better or worse than partly sunny, but I am setting up and testing my telescope/camera equipment today. We are having a wonderful family reunion/eclipse party today and tomorrow and we got to meet our year old twin grandnephews yesterday for the first time...it's a great trip!One more caution about eye protection, it is not safe to wear the eclipse glasses while looking a camera or scope. The light is focused on the glasses and will melt both the glasses and your eye. Only look at the sun through a camera if there is a solar filter on the front of the lens!

Something interesting to watch for tomorrow. Wear red and green to experience the Purkinje effect during the total solar eclipse By Taylor Nicioli, CNN

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Over two centuries ago, physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyně noticed that red flowers looked bright carmine during sunny days but appeared to change to a deep muted hue come nighttime.

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The phenomenon, now known as the Purkinje effect, explains why colors look different depending on how much light is present. In low light, bright reds appear darker, faded and sometimes almost black, while blues and greens tend to become more vibrant — and a total solar eclipse provides an ideal opportunity to observe this shift.

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Usually, the Purkinje effect unfolds slowly as day gives way to night. The eyes, which use two types of light-sensitive receptors, begin to switch from using cone cells that give the brain information on what color is seen in bright light to relying on rod cells, which take over in low light and typically only pick up blue-green wavelengths well, said Will Snyder, manager of the Saint Louis Science Center’s James S. McDonnell Planetarium in Missouri.

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“What we’re seeing with the Purkinje effect isn’t actually happening. It’s just the way our eyes and brains are interpreting light,” Snyder said. “As we get into the totality with the darkening of the sky, our eyes don’t have time to keep up with those changes, so one of the consequences is things that are red tend to look much more muted (in comparison with) things that are blue or green in color.”

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The sky is clear here this morning, but clouds are predicted to move in and then start breaking up about 2 pm and totality is predicted to start at ~3:06 and last 3 minute and 50 seconds.My wife and I both woke up this morning with sore throats and coughs. We will test for Covid later, but we're hoping it's just a cold. We have not had any colds for more than 6 years. But it's ECLIPSE DAY!

I'm headed north in about a half hour. They're saying there's a strong chance of traffic jams, so if traffic comes to a halt I'll turn around.--Percy

Will it be visible in Denver? At least 3 people asked me if we sold eclipse glasses yesterday (we don't). IIRC we were out of the totality zone.

You are out of the totality path, but the partial eclipse will be visible there.

Traffic came to a halt just north of Manchester, still about a hundred miles short of totality. I turned around.--Percy

Im just watching it on the internet. Best not to take a chance with no glasses and my old eyes.It looks pretty cool, though.Man, AZ! Think what we could do with this knowledge of times and dates! We could fool the natives into believing that we alone had the power to stop the Sun! (For a few minutes, anyway!)

At 3:10 PM ET using my iPhone: Light is getting dim out. We have hazy skies.--Percy

At 3:20 PM ET using my iPhone: Light even more dim.--Percy

At 3:30 PM ET using my iPhone: Light very dim, I had trouble setting the exposure on this one.--Percy

We had high hazy clouds here but we could see it quite well, but the corona was blending into the haze some so I hope my over exposures picked up the corona through the haze, but that will probably have to wait until I get back home to Oregon to process those images on my imaging computer. It was a good one and worth the trip. During the whole event the sun was almost directly overhead so I had to get creative with my tripod to position the telescope and camera and I have a hell of a crick in my neck, but worth it!We also took a group picture with our eclipse glasses that I will photoshop a totality shot above us. We did that for the 2017 eclipse and everyone used it as the background image on their phones.Percy, sorry you got stuck in traffic, that was part of the reason we arrived here a few days early.

A partial solar eclipse no matter how close to totality is NOT a total solar eclipse. They are two awesomely different things.Just so you know for next time.