Yeah, but they sure are pretty! And the smell is amazing - like living in a sauna, with the heat to match! I’ve got a poster of Long-leaf pine savanna in my office here in Ottawa, a reminder of happy days spent cruising across the Gulf states.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on pretty (I really don’t care for them), but you got it dead right in the heat and humidity.
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Rush ordered a couple of glasses on Friday—or was it Saturday? Because of that, they were up-sold. Oh well.
Happy eclipse viewing tomorrow! It will be my first. Hoping for a 
-free experience.
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total1 solar eclipse overcast sky 
[1] 99.51-99.7%
My son lives in a “perfect” spot, Boerne, Texas. It is so perfect that they have declared a civil emergency because of the expected influx of eclipse watchers. His in-laws are planning to go to his house for viewing, but I wonder whether they will even be able to get there through the traffic.
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Here’s what that “perfect” spot looks like now. 
That’s San Antonio (or as the locals say, “San Antone”) in the center of the road loop. All that muck is heading north, but so far we’re partly cloudy (with areas of clear) in west central Arkansas. We’ll see how it looks in 2.x hours.
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It was overcast with a fleeting opening where I saw a sliver of sun. It then went dark, but not completely (7/8 p.m. light). The breeze stopped. Still quite dramatic within a span of a few minutes.
BTW, I am in Canada… so the title is not quite accurate.
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It just got mildly dark here. It seemed to confuse the vultures who seemed suoer busy trying to catch thermals. Other than that I really enjoyed being in the soft and eclipse-shaped shadow light play. Also relish in the fact that total eclipses only occur on Earth, as our planet is the only who’s moon happens to be just the right size in the sky to perfectly block the solar disk.
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As it turned out, in west central Arkansas it was totally clear overhead at the time of totality.
I know nothing about solar image processing so I’ll try again after I get home (and can research a little). This was shot handheld with my Canon 850D and EF70-200 f/4L zoom, then processed in mono on my laptop in the hotel room.
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We were only expected to see up to 20ish percent of totality…but we had 100% cloud cover all day. I’ll just catch the next one
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So far, this is one of the coolest images I’ve seen so far:
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Really cool diamond ring effect.
Yesterday I walked past a shop in Budapest that sells telescopes and microscopes, from decent student/hobbyist to professional grade. Apparently you can get an entry level refractive telescope kit for less than 100 EUR that allows visual observation of various wonders of the night sky, from smaller moon craters to the rings of Saturn. You can do this anytime and anywhere you get a clear sky, not having to wait decades for the next opportunity. It puzzles me that many people spend much more to see an eclipse, yet are seemingly not interested in any other aspect of astronomy.
An eclipse is easier.
Yes it usually requires travel but other than that it’s pretty obvious. And it’s very spectacular.
Astronomy, on the other hand, requires effort and study if one plans on moving past the moon and bright planets (even those require effort to observe carefully). It’s much more difficult to get excited about a small dim smudge in an eyepiece. I’m not slighting solar study but speaking from a popular POV.
But probably as much as anything, two other things:
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Eclipses are hyped and promoted, they’re fashionable – Hunching over an eyepiece in the dark is not. It’s seen as dorky.
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One can view an eclipse from the most over-populated, over-developed and light-polluted locations imaginable. Astronomy requires access to dark skies, which are continually disappearing in the face of our ever-increasing lunacy to light up the night.
(sorry for the soapbox, off it now)
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Google trends for “(why) do my eyes hurt”:
Apparently not everyone was wearing the special goggles.
Two of my own photos from yesterday. Too bad I didn’t see this thread earlier to answer the question about my plans.
No social media hype, I realized 14 years ago that there would be not one, but two eclipses with paths crossing just outside of the town I’d been to university, Carbondale, Illinois.
My step dad owned a tiny, nearly dilapidated lake house in a deep rural part of the state not far from Carbondale, and I saw the 2017 eclipse there with him.
No crowds, no other people visible at all.
This time, with favorable weather forcasts but barely any time off, I talked my poor family into round-tripping the 300+ mile (each way) drive in a single day, aiming to watch from the same spot as I did 7 years ago. (Dad still has the little spot on the lake, but it’s in better repair than before. It even has a floor now!)
Wife, two small children, and a five month old dog. I had no right to expect it wouldn’t be a disaster… but everyone had an absolute blast. 
[wipes brow]
Epilogue: traffic was a challenge. I had nine minutes to grab family and camera gear out of the car before totallity once we parked.
As I would often say to the other pilot when we made our departure time by the barest of margins, thus avoiding a query from dispatch:
“Seconds to spare. All the time in the world.”
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Yikes! Now that I’m looking at it again, I see the ugly circle around the corona… That didn’t show up at all on my laptop under motel room lighting!
Ick… 
I’ll do a (hopefully) better one after I’m home next week and replace that sucky image. I promise…
I couldn’t travel for the eclipse for various reasons. So instead I chose to be creative with an in-town eclipse sequence shot. I even put some eclipse glasses on some unattended “children.”
Final composite image shot at 85mm. Basically I took a vertical panorama after the fact. Then blended the sequence in lighten color mode in Krita minding those trees. Obviously the eclipse was much higher in the sky making the shot impossible with this foreground. 85mm was definitely tight for this scene. Not entirely happy with white balance & colors as I was a little heavy handed and not selective enough using ColorEq.
Here’s some fun context shots from my phone while the camera ran taking a sequence every two minutes.
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