Tuesday, August 22, 2017

The Day Of The Eclipse

Hi Everyone.  Yesterday was an exciting day all around the country with the great anticipation of the first solar eclipse since the year 1979.   Yes, I can remember that day back then when it became almost dark in the middle of the day.  I especially remember the birds beginning to chirp, as they do in the early morning, as the sun begins to rise as the eclipse ended.

Photo below from NASA showing the main path of the Eclipse.

One of our friends shared the site below with us.  It was really neat...you could go to the site, click in your Zip Code and then you could see the path and time the eclipse would begin and end.  Even though the eclipse is over now you still may want to click on the site below just for fun.


As we clicked on the above site and typed in our Zip Code these are the images we saw.








So, of course, it was with great anticipation I got my camera and my husband and I headed down to the pasture by the pond to get a clear view of this amazing event.  Before we left, I snapped a couple of photos outside in hopes of showing how normal everything seemed to be on this amazing day.

Looking outside everything seemed normal.  There were still many visitors to the bird feeder, which is located just outside the kitchen window.  There had been woodpeckers, bluejays and redbirds stopping by the feeder.  But for this photo below we only see one redbird.


As we looked up from the pond everything seemed normal and peaceful.


Approaching the pond we spotted lots of clouds.


And even more possible rain clouds in the other direction.


We did not have any viewing glasses, but according to the time we knew the eclipse had begun.







Not wanting to look at the sun directly I pointed the camera up in the sky and did succeed in getting this photo of the sun, but it just looked normal even though we knew the eclipse was in the process.



We kept waiting for our area to become darker, but nothing seemed
to be happening as you can see in the below photo.



At this point according to our information our area was very close to peak,
but everything still seemed bright and shiny.



And, the below photo shows the eclipse right at the 2:40 PM peak for our area. We were amazed that the whole area did look a little bit like it might look if you were viewing through light sunglasses, but actually there was not much change.  We were so surprised there was not more darkness considering the sun was blocked more than three-fourths of the way.

The below photo shows the area as dark as it would be, which was not very dark.
The brightness was just a little more muted than normal.



Our daughter Stephanie and grandson Chase took some unusual photos with a cell phone from her home not too far away from us.  She pointed the cell phone camera toward hot-tub water, which was reflecting the sun,  and captured these photos below.   She was not looking directly at the sun and was still able to see the eclipse in the reflection of the water.




And, my brother Tim who lives out in Los Angeles, California, who is a real photographer, was able to get some amazing photos.   He shared that he shot the photos shown below with a 300mm lens, f32, 4000/sec. and 4x neutral density filter.






Lots of folks were out and about enjoying the beauty all around us and many were trying to capture this moment in time.   But, don't worry, if you missed this eclipse, according to CNN News, there will be another total eclipse on April 8, 2024.

Wishing you a wonderful rest of your week and wishing you many blessings wherever you may be.


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