Regarding the eclipse: So I was prepared. I got up at 6:30 (not as difficult as it has been in past years, as I’m used to doing it for work), got my coat on, and went outside to see if I could catch it. I walked all the way up to the top of the hill, and then jumped on top of some Ryan Homes Property ™, just south of Franklin Drive, to level the horizon even more. Unfortunately, it didn’t level the horizon that much (I might have dropped it to 3 degrees, maybe a little lower), and in addition, it was cloudy. I arrived at 6:47, twelve minutes after sunrise. At this point the clouds were all over the eastern sky, but there were holes, and the holes were getting larger, so I had some hope. Still, it reminded me very much of the Transit of Venus episode last year, where low clouds prevented viewing of the once-in-a-lifetime event and then cleared an hour later. The clouds were forecast to clear today (we’ve got a clear night, supposedly), but of course, they were over the Sun when I got out there. This was bad, because the Moon was moving off the Sun since well before sunrise. “Peak eclipse” as seen from my position looks in Stellarium like it was around 6:07 to 6:10, give or take, with a little more than half the Sun’s disk covered at an altitude of -5 degrees. Well, negative altitude doesn’t help me, so unfortunately that was out. When the Sun actually rose, it was about 40% covered, which reduced well into the 30s by the time it reached one degree altitude (which was invisible anyway). By 7 am, it was less than 10%, and the Moon was off the disk at 7:12. That being said, I stood out there in the wind for a while, hoping the Sun would break through one of the holes. I noticed steady, strong brightening in the southeast, then the limb of the Sun (the high, non-Moon limb, of course) poking out above a cloud layer. After about a minute of this, the area became too bright to look at, so I observed through the welding glass. The eclipse was completely obvious (despite my camera saying otherwise), though very difficult to view due to the clouds. I first caught sight of it at about 6:57, when the Sun was at about 3.5 degrees up. The Moon was well on its way off the disk at that point (5-10%), so it wasn’t overwhelming, but I definitely got it, if only to say I logged it. Within five minutes (i.e. before 7:04), the Sun/Moon combo had moved into another layer of clouds, blocking my view. I could tell, though, that I wasn’t going to get another one, so I began the walk back down the hill toward the house. I reached the Mobbley/Dague Farm intersection at around 7:08, in time to see the Sun break through over the common area (an area where I catch rising Moons all the time at night). I checked it out in the welding glass at that point, saw a beautiful, full disk (green due to the glass), but no perceptible Moon, which would have been the tiniest of tiny notches on the bottom of the Sun. I did, however, see a beautiful naked-eye sunspot group on the other (rising) limb, which was almost as cool as the eclipse itself. I went inside at exactly 7:13, and that was that. Analysis: It was definitely worth it, though not as worth it as I thought before I went out there. The best part of the eclipse was entirely obscured, and even the professional pictures on various advocacy Facebook pages are not showing incredibly crisp shots (probably due to atmosphere). My camera didn’t get any shots of it at all; its software simply treated the little arc of the Moon as an artifact and removed it (embedded as it was in the clouds, the trees, behind the glass, etc). By the time I got a view of it, it was of a little arc at the bottom of the Sun at the same time the clouds were taking bites out of other parts of the Sun, so it wasn’t as striking as it would have been high in a clear sky. I hardly used the binoculars I brought, by the way; naked-eye was perfectly fine. But I got it, and that’s the important thing; I’ve never, with knowledge, seen the Moon touch the Sun at all from a visual perspective. Now I have, despite the brevity and obstruction. Now, back to bed, because tomorrow morning I’m going to work at that time, and I’ve got to be well-rested.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 13:20:11 +0000
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