THE GREAT AMERICAN ECLIPSE

All in a matter of moments, the temperature dropped by at least 20 degrees. The birds stopped singing while crickets took their place. The people that had gathered in a small farm just outside Hopkinsville, Kentucky on this hot August day in 2017 stared upward, dumbstruck. It was a surreal experience, to be sure… almost magical. We were lucky enough to have clear skies and more than two minutes in totality to enjoy this moment of alignment between the Sun, Moon and Earth. I took a few images with the equipment I had. I’m particularly fond of the fractal light patterns that the camera optics revealed.

I’m looking forward to visiting Montreal in 2024 for the next North American total solar eclipse… if you have the means to find a place to witness that one somewhere on the path of totality, I promise you it’s well worth it! Life changing.

Earth’s Moon is about 1/400th the diameter of the Sun, but it is also 1/400th as far from us, making the Sun and the Moon the same size on the sky—a coincidence not shared by any other planet–moon combination in the solar system, allowing for uniquely photogenic total solar eclipses.

Neal DeGrasse Tyson

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The Great American Eclipse

The solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, dubbed the “Great American Eclipse” by the media,^[1] was a total solar eclipse visible within a band that spanned the contiguous United States from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts. It was also visible as a partial solar eclipse from as far north as Nunavut in northern Canada to as far south as northern South America. In northwestern Europe and Africa, it was partially visible in the late evening. In northeastern Asia, it was partially visible at sunrise.

Video of the eclipse second contact in Simpsonville, South Carolina. Crowd reaction is heard on audio.

Prior to this event, no solar eclipse had been visible across the entirety of the United States since June 8, 1918; not since the February 1979 eclipse had a total eclipse been visible from anywhere in the mainland United States.^[2] The path of totality touched 14 states, and the rest of the U.S. had a partial eclipse.^[2]

Wikipedia