As someone who's paranoid about missing the eclipse due to cloudy weather, I've been working with a few people to launch a high altitude balloon during the eclipse: <a href="https://eclipseplus.ca/" rel="nofollow">https://eclipseplus.ca/</a><p>We have several cameras on board, including one that points at the sun and one that takes video. It all gets live-streamed to the ground (actually, that's my contribution to the project - the communications system) and sent off to YouTube.<p>We're launching from New Brunswick, Canada, and we'll be going up to about 30km, or 100k feet. So the clouds definitely won't be an issue for us.
If you're new to this: from experience during past eclipses, <i>make sure you're in the area of totality</i>. Our family was on the edge of that area for the last one and thought it'd be enough - it wasn't, as we sadly learned sitting in a slightly dim parking lot. You need to be right under the center of it to get the full experience.
This is my biggest concern for eclipse day. In the past, when ever I spend money to take pictures of the sky, something always goes wrong. Rent a camera with the IR filter removed specific for astro purposes...it rains so much that the state park with very dark skies closes due to flooding. Have a free weekend with no scheduled activities, a new moon on the weekend, and most importantly, blessing from the SO, yup, weather.<p>This time of year is thunderstorm season, and I'm already concerned about it since I've purchased plenty of solar protection for my gear. I'm just hoping my cunning plan of buying it all last year so far in advance confuses whatever it is that decides when I spend money we get bad visibility. ????
I drove from the northeast down to South Carolina to see the 2017 eclipse in the center of totality.<p>All I can say is ... if you haven't experienced this in your life, go see it. But you must be in the arc of totality, even 99% isn't going to do it. The closer you get to the centerline, the longer totality lasts.<p>And it's something else. It gets very dark, very quickly. It gets cold, the stars come out, it feels surreal.<p>It's awe-inspiring.
I found this site a few weeks back. It was built for generic astronomical clear-sky use in the US and Canada (at least) but it has this page[1] for weather along the eclipse track.<p>[1]<a href="https://www.cleardarksky.com/ec/2024-04-08_eclipse_map.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cleardarksky.com/ec/2024-04-08_eclipse_map.html</a>
Does anyone have a recommendation for the easiest way to see the eclipse if I haven’t started planning until now, from California? Flights to Mezatlan are basically full so it would involve a bunch of connections. Optimizing for being able to fly Saturday, and back Monday, with minimal hassle (eg connections or long drives) and hopefully a city that has more than a few seconds of totality. Thanks in advance for any tips
How are people sourcing and testing their eclipse glasses?<p>Amazon seems full of their usual random-brand-name search spamming.<p>I see this, but don't know how many people are informed by it: <a href="https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/how-to-tell-if-viewers-are-safe" rel="nofollow">https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/how-to-tell-if-viewers-ar...</a>
BTW your eclipse adventure doesn't necessarily end when the eclipse does. If you are driving home your navigation apps might try to send you on more adventures.<p>The main roads and the reasonable alternates might all be slow over a wide area, leading to the apps thinking that various roads that would never normally be suggested would be better.<p>Here is what a friend told my happened when he was trying to get from the middle or Oregon to the Bay Area after the 2017 eclipse:<p>> Google kept sending us onto logging roads: we bailed on the first when we were told to turn onto a non-existent road; we bailed on the second when a van came out and told us that ~5 cars were stuck axle-deep in mud; we bailed on the third when we got to a sign informing us that we were about to enter an off-road-vehicle trail.
Yeah, plan on hitting the road and more or less following the path if the forecast doesn't look good where I am.<p>In general it looks like the closer you go to Mexico, the better your odds — historically.
Related problem: How do i convince someone that it's worth traveling 30 hours (by boat) to be in the path of totality? Ideally i need something convincing in German. Thanks for your help!
Tangentially related... My pet theory is that it was total eclipses that motivated ancient civilizations' evident fascination with astronomy and (by extension!) mathematics.
I live in the path of totality and the city is planning on it being chaos. There are billboards up. Schools are closed for the day. I'm sure every hotel room is booked. And yet, I mentioned it in class the other day and that was the first time one of my students - in college - had heard of it.
I need to be in a city the eclipse is passing over, for a reason unrelated to the eclipse. I can't get a hotel room that night, and I think I will have to drive out of its path for one night. I don't even care about the eclipse but this is so inconvenient and I'm very frustrated.
Someone told me to find a "pressure bubble" the day of.<p>As in a region of high atmospheric pressure.<p>As this would likely mean low or no cloud formation.<p>Anyone have a good source of live or forecasted pressure maps?