The Great American Eclipse from 49 Degrees North

IMG_1767 (2)The sun 19 minutes into the eclipse, Note the sun spots (blips) at the center of the big bite.

 

Although we, in Bellingham WA, were not within the total eclipse range, we were close enough to get some feel for this exciting celestial event. Being just 20 miles from the Canadian border and about 300 miles north of the band of totality we were able to experience 90% of the eclipse.

I present a few photos I too to continue to document this amazing physical world that we live in. We need to take each chance we can to fully appreciate its grandeur and experience the awe that it evokes.

This will be largely a photo diary illustrating the sequence of moon’s orbit intersecting with our view of the sun. The entire sequence lasted about 2 hours and 38 minutes, although it seemed to change quite quickly as we watched it roll across our eastern sky.

We had an impromptu viewing party at our son’s house. He and Keri were at work so we and the grand kids took over the deck. Then the neighbors heard that we had the glasses and they came too, and a few dogs.

IMG_0614All eyes to the east.The dogs did not like the glasses.

 

I selected the 13 eclipse photos that follow from about 90 that I took. These were spaced at about 10 minute ( +/- 1 min.) increments to illustrate the movement over the length of the event.

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The 90% maximum eclipse from 49 North

 

From here the moon starts to swing through and a bit below the sun.

 

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And there you have it. We would have loved to have seen the totality with all of the resplendent and radiant glory of the corona but the traffic and distance were daunting. This worked for us.I hope you enjoy the images from the Great American Eclispe.

14 Comments

  1. So, here is a big orange ball with lots of bites taken out of it. I hope you enjoyed the eclipse where ever you saw it. This is a look from our perspective in the Pacific North west.

    • This is awe-inspiring. Where I am in Michigan, we would have had about 80% totality, but mostly what we had was clouds. I was working so couldn’t participate in the viewing, but I had a lot of very disappointed friends when the clouds started rolling in about an hour before and after the eclipse. It wasn’t solid cloud cover, but they scudded by often enough to make viewing and photographing very difficult. Thank you for sharing!

      • Thanks DoReMi,
        I am pleased that you enjoyed my pics. Too bad about the cloud cover. I guess that is just more the pesky nature of nature.

      • We were at 84% and because it was cloudy before and after the peak, there was no “ooh, ahhh” moment when the shadow arrived – it just blended into normal cloud shadows. I didn’t have the glasses.

        I enjoyed the view most of the afternoon from my couch watching NASA TV on my dish. It looked like great fun and I am going to do my best to be in the path in 2024 – and a short drive from totality.

    • Thanks JanF. For some reason I had a problem uploading my photos to the moose. They would only copy the html and not the visual. I tried all different ways and have done it easily for hundreds of photos on this and my other WordPress sites.

      What finally worked was to move the photos from Flickr to a DKos draft and then copy them from there to the Moose.

      Any suggestions?

      • I did a right-click Copy Image of your displayed Flickr photo down to my computer and then uploaded that image to WordPress.

        Whenever I have photos to include, I save the image to my computer and upload; I have never had any luck using the direct links within the post. If you did in the past, I wonder if they changed something. I don’t know much about Flickr – I was an old Photobucket person before they stopped their free service. I do remember that I had to use the special embed link to get it to work. I hope you can use the workaround!

        • Thanks Jan,
          I did as you noted with the right click, copy image embed etc. but couldn’t get the image. So, another internet mystery. I’ do some playing around to see what else might work.

  2. It was fun to share the moment with family friends and dogs. I had the legs up blue chair with Maggie on my lap and Heide underneath, staying cool.

    Your photos capture the experience, thanks!

  3. They were passing around the glasses so I got to see it pretty much right at the “peak” – a solar version of the “Cheshire moon” – lovely to see the sequence. Thank you.

      • I was surprised as we weren’t in the direct path at just how much of the sun was covered from where we were. My PV system tells the story – it was still generating at the most eclipsed point, but at less than .25 KWs where as at the beginning of the eclipse it was generating at 2.5 KWs

        • Even though the light was somewhat dimmed, we still had good light. I saw a graph showing the drop in EM waves during the partial eclipse and they really did drop quickly. Fortunately for you others, it didn’t last too long. You need that AC down there.

          • Yes, the light intensity didn’t seem to drop that much – but the PV output certainly did. And yes, the average usage in say October when I’m not using furnace or A/C is 5 KWHs/day. The average usage in July when I’m running A/C most of the time is 18 KWHs/day. I need all the production I can get when I’m running A/C.

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