Total Solar Eclipse

"This is the most amazing experience of my entire life! I have never seen anything as amazing as the solar eclipse!" - Nora

The last total solar eclipse in the U.S. during my lifetime passed through the Pacific Northwest in 1979, and I remember when I was studying astronomy in High School learning that the next total solar eclipse in the U.S. wouldn't come around until the far off year of 2017.  In 1993 I saw a partial solar eclipse, with all the cool pinhole projections of the solar crescent from the dappled light coming through the trees. But then, I put it out of my mind for a long time. Then a couple years ago I came across the Great American Eclipse website, and decided to mark August 21, 2017 on my calendar.  I thought about moving our beach trip to Charleston, SC to see the eclipse, but we needed to wait for the school calendar to come out, and sure enough the eclipse fell on the first day of school. For such a great educational experience, I wouldn't mind taking the kids out of school, but for Owen it was going to be his first day of Middle School, and it would be really hard to miss out on the first day. For Nora though, the 21st was a conference day, so she wouldn't actually have to miss anything.  After a little hemming and hawing, and talking with Elaine, we decided that this was too great a chance to pass up, and Nora and I would drive down to South Carolina on Owen's birthday, and drive home the next day after the eclipse. We booked an AirB&B right by campus in Columbia, ordered some NASA approved eclipse glasses, and even convinced Aunt Katherine to join us on the adventure.

On Saturday morning we watched Owen open birthday presents, then hit the road for South Carolina. The drive down went smoothly, with only a little bit of traffic. In fact we got there before our condo was ready, but fortunately we were able to hang out at the pool while we waited (though we did need an extra stop at Target to pick up swim suits). We had a lovely dinner, put Nora to bed, and Katherine and I watched Game of Thrones before heading to bed ourselves.

After a nice lazy morning, we packed up and went to the University of South Carolina intramural fields across the street from our condo to pick out our viewing spot. The morning was a little cloudy, and the sun was actually behind the clouds at first contact (C1), but the clouds over us quickly cleared off for the initial partial stages of the eclipse.  We could see plenty of big clouds on the horizon, but we were cautiously optimistic that they would hold off. Things started to get really interesting about 15 minutes before totality, the quality of the light started to change, slightly dimmer with sharper shadows, almost like there was a strange filter applied to the whole world around us. The temperature began to drop too, and the wind picked up.  It was in the mid 90's before the eclipse, and by the time we reached totality it felt like the temperature was down to the 70's. The last few seconds before totality you could really feel the excitement, crickets chirping, street lights coming on, Bailey's beads and then the diamond ring came into view, people started screaming, and then all of the sudden the sky went dark, the stars came out, our eclipse glasses came off, and the corona appeared before us.

I don't think I can put the beauty of totality into words, and all the pictures I've seen fail to do it justice. It looks far bigger in the sky than I expected, and seeing the type of thing you come to expect from beautiful Hubble images with your naked eyes sends tingles of excitement down your spine. It's easy to be jaded, and expect a big event to be overhyped and underwhelming, but after being in the path of totality myself, I have to agree with Nora. I've never seen anything as amazing as the solar eclipse!

(click here for all the pictures)