Allie: Where are my eclipse glasses, Mother?
Quickly! The sun's about to disappear!
(no worries - no cats' eyes were harmed for this photo! this was just a moody shot taken one weekend afternoon, but it makes a fitting introduction for this long-overdue eclipse photo gallery)
Here is what it looked like for us in Missouri, along the line of totality, August 21, 2017
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Enjoy!
As we set up, the clouds were still drifting across the sun, (well, okay the moon was, as well!) but they swiftly cleared.
See the red sunspots?
Totality itself was amazing, viewed through the lens. White streaks of light, waving around the edges ... they might have been thought a part of science-fiction movie magic. Nope, they're real.
The red parts are solar prominences. They're not flares, as they're still contained by the Sun's magnetic field.
During totality, the temperature noticeably dropped. It appeared eerie, otherworldly. And in fact, that's a far more apt description than one might realize.
The eerieness comes from the fact that you are experiencing dusk - but at a time of day when the wavelength of light is shorter - and your body instinctively recognizes this.
Normally at dusk, the wavelength of visible light is much longer, and it's coming through a lot more atmosphere on the horizon as the Sun sets or rises. Here, the light is straight overhead and the wavelength of visible light is shorter.
So it truly is otherworldly -- it might be said that this is what visible light might look like if you were standing on a planet much farther away from the Sun than our Earth.
This one, and the next, are probably my favorite. Who knew the Sun was so beautiful?
Finally, as totality reaches its end, you experience the Diamond Ring effect. A photograph truly cannot catch this brilliant flash of light that flares out at you.
At this point, the filter goes back over the camera and the photos return to their orange tint.
(unfortunately, we missed the International Space Station's epic photobomb -- clouds had obscured it!)
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simulation of how things appeared during totality |