Best advice I've accumulated so far:<p>1. Don't plan to drive anywhere on eclipse day (90% of the US lives within an 8hr drive of totality, so traffic will be horrible)<p>2. A 600-800mm lens is optimal for photography. Anything short of 200mm is useless.<p>3. Don't make any solid plans until 3-4 days before. Most places only have about 40% chance of it being clear.<p>4. If you're photographing the partial phases. Stop and check everything (batteries, memory card, focus, etc) about 5 min before totality.<p>5. If you have any technological issues during totality, just sit back and enjoy watching it.<p>6. On eclipse day, if you're in a place that has 2 min or more of totality, just stay there. There's not a lot to be gained by risking moving.<p>7. All across the US, the sun will be high in the sky, good horizons aren't necessary.
Can someone explain why the claimed shadow of the moon is vastly more bumpy than it ever appears in the night sky? Or how to square this with the fact that altitude of the highest and lowest points on the Moon differ by less than 20km, or less than 1% of the diameter? The shadow looks like it has bumps of about 5-10% of the diameter.
If you want to experience the greatest duration plan a trip to Southern Illinois (more info about duration here: <a href="https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/illinois/" rel="nofollow">https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/illinois/</a>).<p>As a bonus a friend of mine's family winery has booked Ozzy to "bark at the moon" during the eclipse: <a href="http://loudwire.com/ozzy-osbourne-headlining-moonstock-solar-eclipse-festival/" rel="nofollow">http://loudwire.com/ozzy-osbourne-headlining-moonstock-solar...</a>
If you've never seen a total eclipse before and you live in the US, make every effort to see this one! It's not something that you can get the feel of by viewing photos or video. Watching the sun get eaten by a black void activates something deep inside the animal brain. Don't settle for a partial eclipse, do what it takes to get in the path of totality.<p>If you have seen a total eclipse before, then you don't need any convincing.
Here are my viewing tips, based on my experience in the 1979 eclipse in Oregon.<p>You can photograph the eclipse, but you will have a much grander experience if you don't try. Photography is just a distraction from the awesome spectacle of the eclipse, including the phenomena that happen on the ground.<p>There will be plenty of other people taking great photos, so enjoy those after the eclipse. A total eclipse, viewed directly with your own eyes, is truly an experience of a lifetime. No photograph comes close.<p>Contrary to one or two other comments, eye protection is not necessary <i>during totality</i> and will prevent you from seeing the full beauty of the corona. It is perfectly safe to view the <i>total</i> eclipse with the naked eye, or even with binoculars. Only the partial phases need eye protection (and they definitely do). [1] [2] [3]<p>In fact, on the hillside we ended up at, something interesting happened. Most of the people wore dark sunglasses and faced <i>away</i> from the sun during the first partial phase, in order to get their eyes a bit acclimated to the dark. The partial eclipse isn't very interesting compared to totality, and the fun stuff at that point is happening on the ground: there are ripples of light dancing on the ground like you see on the bottom of a shallow stream. And you may get to see the shadow rushing toward you at 10,000 miles an hour!<p>The moment it reached totality, there were shouts of "it's total!" up and down the hill. Everyone took off their sunglasses and looked directly at the total eclipse. Many of us brought binoculars and viewed the corona with them.<p>The danger is that it is tempting to keep looking at the end of totality, when the string of beads starts to appear at the edge of the moon (where the sun is starting to peek through the moon's valleys), and finally the "diamond ring" where a larger part of the sun appears through the deepest valley. If you bring proper eye protection, switch to it the moment the string of beads appear, and definitely before the diamond ring appears! I recommend doing this after totality and not before, so you don't interfere with your eyes' dark adaptation before totality.<p>[1] <a href="https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/safety.html" rel="nofollow">https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/safety.html</a><p>[2] <a href="https://eclipse.aas.org/resources/telescopes-binoculars" rel="nofollow">https://eclipse.aas.org/resources/telescopes-binoculars</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/what_you_see.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/what_you_see.htm</a>
Smarter Every Day just posted a great video related to this:<p>> HOW TO WATCH THE ECLIPSE (AND SHADOW SNAKES) - Smarter Every Day 171<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc7MfcKF1-s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc7MfcKF1-s</a>
I heard from a co-worker who plans to travel to Oregon that some of the hotel rooms in the path of the umbra are sometimes > 2-3k USD for the night(s) prior to the eclipse.
I don't want to travel to this one if I can avoid it, and there seems to be none in Europe in my life time.<p>Will the April 2024 one be as good as this one?
I suppose one drawback of that one is that april is probably(?) much larger risk of clouds in a lot of the US, than august?<p><a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/list-total-solar.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/list-total-solar.html</a>
Hello everyone. I'm currently working with a group who plans to do some experimental sounding of the effects of the eclipse on the ionosphere. If you want to learn more about this project please check out our website <a href="http://hamsci.org/" rel="nofollow">http://hamsci.org/</a>. We are pushing a number of fun ways to get involved with collecting very useful data for scientific analysis.<p>I'd like to ask anyone who lives on the midwest or east coast to consider helping these projects:<p>1. EclipseMob: <a href="http://hamsci.org/node/148" rel="nofollow">http://hamsci.org/node/148</a><p>This project will ship you a set of ICs and a breadboard that will make up a VLF receiver. No soldering is required. It's a great kit to put together with children.<p>After you build up the kit you plug it into your phone's microphone jack and run an app that agregates radio signal information (I/Q data I think) to the EclipseMob organizers. After the eclipse is over you'll still be in possession of a fully capable VLF receiver kit. You can use it to listen to VLF signals that are interesting. This may include human generated traffic or whistlers.<p>2. Total Eclipse SEQP: <a href="http://hamsci.org/seqp" rel="nofollow">http://hamsci.org/seqp</a><p>If you have an amateur radio license and want to help participate in a contest you can hop on the air and operate during the eclipse. The more people on the air the better dataset we have.<p>3. Setup a Reverse Beacon Network receiver.<p>The main dataset we use is the Reverse Beacon Network. It's a set of automated receivers that listen to short-wave Morse code and RTTY communications. If you have a few bucks burning a hole in your pocket and want to set up a we have a page that talks about how to do this: <a href="http://hamsci.org/cw-reverse-beacon-network-how-guide" rel="nofollow">http://hamsci.org/cw-reverse-beacon-network-how-guide</a><p>Using these data sources we would like to generate a very high resolution picture of the effects of a solar eclipse. As it turns out we don't exactly have the best understanding of what goes on during an eclipse.<p>We have a few other projects in the works that I'm not very familiar with. One idea is recording I/Q data from JT65 bands and building a data set via Zenodo so that everyone who contributes to the data set gets their name as a reference on papers that use it.<p>If you're interested and want to hear more about this you can reply to this post or send me an email to my "work" email. My email username is jk369 and my university's mail address is njit.edu.
Regarding weather, places that have clouds due to convection have a chance of clearing up during the eclipse. I experienced this in China in 2009 - completely overcast two hours before totality, clearing up just in time due to lower solar insolation and less convection.<p>You shouldn't count on this, try positioning for good weather in advance regardless, but just keep it in mind so you don't crash your car heading for better weather if things look poor.
Question for those who know more than I do about this. According to [0] the sun will be about 97% obscured at my house. Is it worth traveling for that last 3%?<p>0: <a href="http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2017_GoogleMapFull.html" rel="nofollow">http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2017...</a>
So what will be the practical difference between 99.4% (at my home) and 100% about 35 miles away. Is it worth the effort to travel to the true totality zone? I do unfortunately have a commitment that day, that I cannot avoid, about 2 hours before the max obscuration passes by.
What affect is this going to have on solar power? California has a load of solar going on, and this may cause a complete collapse in solar output very suddenly (way more suddenly than the evening). Can peaker plants come up quickly enough?