2024 eclipse

We didn't travel to see the April 8, 2024 eclipse over Mexico and North America, though I wanted very much to.  The event was on the first day of school, and amazingly all the kids wanted to be in school.  Lin wasn't excited about it.  I think all of them associate eclipses with the mosh pit that was the county fairgrounds in Madras, Oregon, where we camped out to see the 2017 eclipse.  Except for the eclipse itself, it wasn't a good experience for anyone.

So I contented myself with viewing the partial eclipse from home.  Fortunately we had good weather and good seeing.  I used my long focal length singlet solar projector, which showed a nice image but the tracking is off so it wasn't convienent.  I mainly used my 6-inch with the quark.

I studied the prominences hanging off the sun's limb because I knew I would be able to see the moon in front of these features before first contact.  And sure enough I was able to watch the moon slowly cover over two large prominences, including a distinctive V-shaped one which was visible during totality by the naked eye.  As the eclipse was ending, I watched as these prominences re-emerged from behind the moon.  

During partiality I enjoyed seeing the uneven line of the moon's curved shape -- crater mountains as so on -- silhouetted across the sun.  Filaproms disappeared and reappeared and were partially covered by these subtle irregularities in the shadow.  

I invited my neighbor Gary who brought along his mother-in-law, who is from New York and who looked uncannily like my own mother -- there might be some distant relation.  She had never looked through a telescope before but eventually was able to see the prominences.

They left soon after full partiality.  In fact a lot of observers stopped observing, as if the climax of the show was all the show to see.  I continued to watch the moon's shadow as it approached final contact.  It seemed to accellerate as it moved further off the sun, but of course this was an illusion of perspective.  Smaller prominences reappeared along the sun's limb.  Best of all was watching the moon through final contact: I saw the hacksaw-blade looking chromosphere along the limb of the sun, separated by a thin black line.  As the moon moved off the limb it was still covering this very thin feature appeared as wedges on both sides, rapidly moving toward the point of the moon which made last contact, filling up the wedges with the tiny blades which popped up whole as the moon moved away.  Difficult to describe but very interesting to watch.

Perhaps we will be able to make arrangements to see future eclipses at totality.  I hope so!