Total Solar Eclipse: August 21, 2017

This total solar eclipse was the first solar eclipse to pass over the mainland United States in several years, which made for a highly anticipated event across the U.S., both within and outside of astronomical communities.

One of the more popular cities to visit during eclipse time was Idaho Falls, ID, which is where I went to see the eclipse. The weather on eclipse day was perfectly clear - there were no clouds anywhere to be seen.

For this eclipse I brought out all the telescopes I could bring with me.  For visuals, a Dobsonian with an off-axis cover and a projector to display an image of the Sun on a screen (as well as the usual solar-filter glasses for unmagnified observations.) For photographs, The Meade LX6 was set up with an off-axis solar filter. I made an off-axis filter to help cut down the light entering the telescope, which helped with setting the camera exposures.

First contact began shortly after 10:00 am. Once it was visible to the naked eye, there was a cheer from the crowd of people gathered outside. The eclipse had begun.

And then came the wait. The moon would cross the Sun's disk for over an hour, and changes would be relatively slow. It was a great time to relax, get a snack, and watch the sunspots as they disappeared behind the Moon's advancing shadow.

As second contact neared, the sunlight began to change. It became dimmer, and sort of "blurry" to the eyes. The quality of light during the deep partial phases is very hard to describe; it's easy to talk about when you're there, but very hard to talk about with no other reference.

About 30 minutes before totality, the air temperature began to drop noticeably. Crescent shapes in tree shadows were prominent, and a light wind began to blow. The local wildlife began to quiet down. Excitement was building.

The moments around totality are ones that will stay with me for the rest of my life. About a minute or two before, the temperature began to drop even quicker. The wind picked up to a cold breeze, and the diminishing sunlight was barely enough to light up the sky and ground. At that moment, it felt like a dim, cold, wintry day on another world, even though an hour ago it had been a hot summer Idaho morning. The Sun, now high in the sky, faded rapidly as the last bits of light faded.

To the naked eye (or at least to mine), the corona appeared to be glowing, white-yellowish streaks originating from the Sun's location. Where the Sun used to be, there was now an empty black circle, the Moon's shadow casting straight down onto our location. It was a thing of indescribable form which I could've spent hours looking at, but in Idaho the time of totality was less than 2 minutes. So I pulled the solar filter off of the scope for some direct imaging of the total eclipse.

An interesting camera effect came into play right at the moment of totality - by removing the off-axis filter from the telescope, I had effectively increased my telescope's aperture, which narrows its depth of field. Therefore, what had been a focused image of the Sun during the partial phase was ever-so-slightly out of focus in the unfiltered totality. There was no time to refocus, though; I went with what I had and took pictures anyway.

As totality ended, I grabbed the last of my photographs and replaced the solar filter to resume pictures of the partial phase. The entire crowd clapped and cheered as the Sun returned - that brief moment of darkness had been an amazing show. As the eclipse ended and the Moon began to recede, we talked about what we had just seen. Some of us had seen the planets as well, while others had taken time to look at the shadows and sunset around them. Strangely, none of us saw shadow bands (the strange flickering of light right before and after totality), despite preparing for them.

By the official "end" of the eclipse, the hot summer day had returned, and many skywatchers had packed up and were on their way home. This caused some massive traffic jams across the eclipse path - I'm happy that my return trip started the next day.

This was the first total solar eclipse I have ever seen and it was an amazing and overwhelming experience. There was a lot that happened in such a short time, and many things had to be prepared just right for a very brief moment. The partial eclipse of 2012, which was the closest eclipse I had seen to this one, had elements that were similar to this eclipse, but there is a world of difference between partial light and no light.

More solar eclipses will be crossing the U.S. in the future. I hope I'll be able to stand in that shadow again someday. Next time, I'll be more focused in my photo setup, especially in the camera lens.

Finally, the photographs from the LX6 camera were put together to form a time-lapse of the eclipse from beginning to end. The final video turned out pretty good, actually - you can watch it here: