Saturday, August 26, 2017

Eclipsed!
















A whole bunch of people gathered on August 21 at David and Kim's new house to watch the eclipse in the Area of Totality (which would make a good name for a band or a novel). 
















Most folks got there early so they could get good and ready.























Like Jacob, who was good and ready.

















Some of the kids found it hard to make the eclipse glasses work, so Pace and David made some modified glasses


















that were easier to use. (At least one older person found this technology helpful as well.)




















Matt and some other folks made a crawl-in, pinhole eclipse viewer.


















This is what it was doing inside (multiple pinholes were involved).
















Tracking the progress of the moon across the sun.

The sky got pretty cloudy just before the totality, but the clouds were moving and had thin places, so we got a series of beautiful, breathtaking views of the corona. Despite the dimming of the light beforehand, the sudden darkness was stunning. During the last bit of the totality, the sun was not visible at all, and the first bit of direct sunlight to slip past the moon lit up the clouds as though someone had flipped a switch.
















Click to see this larger. You might know some of these fine people.
















An eclipse in the palm of my hand. Many thanks to David and Kim for being excellent hosts.



Click the triangle to hear a bit of what it sounded like: