Juliancolton

I've actually spent a little time since Monday looking into what it would take to hit up La Serena, Chile in 2019. At the centerline, about an hour north of the city if you take the rural coastal roads, totality is just 2m36s – as we've all just witnessed, that's spectacularly brief. That said, it all goes down about an hour before sunset, so the low angle would introduce a while new dimension into it I think. The photography prospects would be epic with the beaches and rocky coastline.

Some folks just don't share in the enthusiasm even after experiencing the thing for themselves. My dad has seen a couple in his lifetime and thinks it's pretty cool when you find yourself in totality, but probably wouldn't go out of his way to see another one even if it were only a half hour down the road. Everybody gets their kicks in different ways... if it were up to me, my whole family would be fanatical snowstorm chasers but alas.

Yeah, that may well be the defining shot for me as well... I love all the human activity and the fact that there are some actual landmarks connecting the eclipse to a real place. I was slightly worried the sun would be too high to capture any foreground elements, but I actually visited this spot with my widest lens at 2:40 on Sunday and confirmed that I could get the shot. Overall I'm pretty thrilled with how I managed to successfully take several different types of pictures while still enjoying the event with my own senses. My goal now is to be fully automated for the next one so I don't have to concentrate on the cameras at all during totality. Very much a fan of your photos as well. That most recent one is spectacular with how brightly Regulus is shining.

Took 16 hours to get home from Greenville and I'm only now getting to process my photos from the event. A couple of my favorites... Outer corona, Regulus, Mercury, and some earthshine on the moon: Gorgeous prominences just after second contact: Wide-angle view of the Reedy River and thousands of spectators at totality:

Even all the way to the shores of SC you only have 6 fewer seconds of totality than the point of greatest duration near Carbondale. That's totally imperceptible, so chalk it up to jackpot fetish.

No accommodations anywhere except SC. This was always a multi-purpose trip so I don't have much freedom to deviate from my itinerary unfortunately...

SC looks like crap again after some pretty encouraging runs yesterday. The GFS in particular has a nasty stratiform overcast with pretty much no hope of mitigating factors verbatim. I was planning on leaving this evening but I think I'll wait to see the overnight runs before starting the 12 hour drive... if the outlook gets much worse I may cut my losses and start planning for Chile in 22 months.

Let's see if we can decouple the BL.

The Euro op is pretty miserable looking on the synoptic scale for SC. Let's not do that solution.

The Disney parks will see over 6 minutes of totality in 2045, so that should be quite the show. That's approaching the maximum possible duration for any total solar eclipse, I believe. I can only imagine the festivities they'll host leading up to it.

Eh, I'd trade this for the '66 Leonids outburst without a second thought.

I may prop my phone up somewhere and shoot some quick video during totality for the sentimental value, but otherwise I plan to focus on still photography and just observing. That may change if I find myself stuck in dodgy wx and only get to see the fully eclipsed sun through breaks in the clouds, in which case it would make more sense to record just video and extract the clearest frames later... wouldn't want my eyes glued to viewfinders the whole time.

You can record shadow bands, but they're so faint that they'd be imperceptible in a still photograph. The effect is mostly one of movement.

Oh what could have been (and this wasn't even in the core of the CME as far as I can tell).

That's good advice for most but even though this will hopefully be my first TSE, photography will be a big part of the day for me. I work as a photographer so I'm intimately familiar with my camera gear and can operate it in the dark or under pressure, etc. I plan to have three cameras set up – one mounted to a telescope for close-up views, one with a 300mm telephoto lens for imaging the outer corona, and one with a wide-angle lens to capture the scenery at totality (this one might get axed depending on my viewing site. Hotel parking lot? meh.) With semi-automation and remote shutter releases, it'll be doable. I'm positive that not every shot will be a success... my biggest goal is merely to learn as many lessons as possible so I'm better prepared for future eclipses.

I'll be getting in early on the 20th, so hopefully it won't be too crazy yet.

If the College, AK station is really at K = 9, that's some pretty extreme high-lat storming.

There were a HSS and secondary glancing CME thrown into the mix as well, so maybe a slighter higher chance than normal of favorable conditions persisting all day. Probably a lost cause, though.

The aggregate of modelling from the CME scoreboard has it hitting mid-morning tomorrow local time, which would be pretty abysmal timing but also par for the course the past few years. I'll be checking periodically throughout the night tonight for an early arrival

G2 watch in effect starting Sunday from the full-halo CME last night. This is from the STEREO craft situated out ahead of earth so the amount of plasma headed east is misleading, but still, surprisingly impressive event for such a magnetically simple sunspot region.

Tomorrow night is worth watching with the rapid-fire CIR/CH/CME sequence. Hopefully the timing is right and the streams don't just destructively interfere with each other.

Coronal holes always become bigger and more numerous during the years leading up to solar minimum. Nothing new as far as I can tell.

Things got pretty lively for a time on the Sebec Lake webcam. Probably would have been able to pick up some color on camera down here, but I wasn't feelin' it.

Good stuff. I put together a WV loop earlier, if anybody's interested.

IMF looks nice. Shame about all the clouds.