Juliancolton

Sickening. Reports of a kindergarten collapse from the quake while in session, with 100 children unaccounted for.

Really bad situation in Mexico City unfolding.

I didn't set up my camera until after the substorm started fading, figured I had more time than I did. Unlike with most events, the photos I got are actually less impressive than what I saw with the naked eye just moments before. Plus, I think I had my camera shooting at the wrong bit depth so the sky is all posterized. Urgh...

Naked eye pink pillars down here for a few minutes. Beautiful.

I'm not convinced this was the shock from the X9.3 associated CME yet... IMF already trending weaker and north

Still much too bright here from twilight but at least it's clear for the time being.

Largest flare of the whole solar cycle. Still several hours before the next link with SOHO is established to determine the extent and direction of any potential CME, but it looks pretty textbook. A "glancing blow" scenario seems most likely with the position of the source region.

If you still have your eclipse glasses, definitely go check out the naked-eye sunspots currently near the middle of the sun's disc. Snapped this a few minutes ago... the bottom active region is rapidly evolving into a more magnetically complex configuration and could start producing some pretty sizable solar flares.

I got seasick once on one of those silly whale-watching boat rides and 3 hours felt like an eternity. Not sure you could pay me enough to spend days at a time on the high seas...

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.