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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