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Monday,
August 21, 2017; west
of Union Pass, Wind River Range, Wyoming.
Before I tell my eclipse story, I present one of
the paintings I did while I was in England over the Winter.
C1619
“Storm over Botany Bay”
(Isle of Thanet, Kent, England)
Oil Sketch on
Pannelli Telati fine CottonPanel
5” x 7”
There was an eclipse
of the Sun in 1999, and at that time I lived on the path of totality at
Treyarnon Bay, Cornwall, England. I
planned for it. I bought heavy duty
neutral density filters, for my camera and a eclipse goggles for me; made sure
I had batteries for my tape recorder as well as my microphone; made sure my
watch was synchronized to Universal Time, which happens to be Greenwich Mean
Time (Winter Time, not British Summer Time); went out to one of the bronze age
round barrows between Porthcothan Bay and Bedruthan Steps (to be close to the
Ancients, as well as closer to the centerline of totality), several hours early
to set up. As the morning progressed, people
began to wander out to the sea-cliffs, singly and in small family groups or friends;
I would not be alone while I made audio notes with my tape recorder. The morning started out cloudless and
beautiful, but as first contact approached, a band of cloud appeared overhead. IT DID NOT MOVE, as expected, but remained
overhead, blocking the Sun, while to both north and south, outside the path of
totality, it remained cloudless!!! The
light began to dim, and get a bit weird, but still no Sun/Moon discs to be
seen. Finally it the darkness of
totality rushed across the sea towards us and we were engulfed in darkness in
the middle of the day. There was
sunlight down at St. Ives, 40 miles away to the south, and it was clear to the
north up on High Cliff above Boscastle, and there were sunset colours on the
horizon outside the circle of totality, but we were not treated to the ‘hole’
of the Moon surrounded by the Sun’s Corona.
Some teenage girls nearby screamed and shouted like they were at a rock
concert when it went dark, but luckily other people nearby overwhelmed by the gravity
of the moment shushed them, for which I was grateful. After totality, when packing up, I was able
to glimpse a few seconds of a crescent Sun through a thin section of cloud; I
didn’t even need my eclipse goggles! And
that was it … the band of cloud remained until long after last contact.
Not
so for the Eclipse of 2017! Again my
base in Oregon was on the path of totality, but I am not in Oregon; I am in
Wyoming a few miles west of Union Pass in the northern Wind River Range, on the
forest roads and 20 miles from the nearest paved highway. I arrived on Saturday, and the journey from Lincoln
Portal, above Aspen, to here will be
covered in another post. Even up here on
the desperate forest roads there were loads of campers in forest, in their
tents, camper vans, and even camper trailers!
I thought perhaps I had left it too late, but the deeper I went the
fewer there were, until I found a clearing on a forest road, off a forest road
off a forest road, all to myself … nearest neighbors .75 miles away. A great site to camp, but on eclipse day I moved
back up the road 1.25 miles where I had a view of the Grand Tetons 45 miles
away, and in the direction from which the Moon’s shadow would come. Morning of the 21st; Eclipse Day! A couple of puffy clouds and a few wisps of
high cloud in the early morning, but these disappeared well before time. I arrived and set up my astronomy app on my tablet
ready with five minutes to go before first contact. Using GPS, the app was able to show me the
state of the impending eclipse in real time.
I took a couple of photos of the distant Tetons; they were visible, but
almost lost in haze.
 |
| Tetons lost in haze, but you can detect their
snowfields above the more obvious mountains on the horizon. |
I am at Latitude
43.50168°N & Longitude 109.96909°W.
All the following times
are USA Mountain Summer Time which is 6 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time (or Universal
Time).
10:19:09 - I detect
first contact through my eclipse spectacles … a tiny bite out of the Sun-disc,
as the Moon, begins its journey across the face of the Sun.
11:10 – by now the Sun
is a fat crescent and the light on the landscape is noticeably wan.
11:22 – fourteen
minutes to go getting dimmer, and it’s chillier, so I put on a fleece five
minutes ago; a breeze has kicked up.
11:24 – put a bandana
around my neck.
11:25 – a thinner
crescent Sun.
11:30 – a thumbnail
crescent; weird light … sunny, but dim … NOT like twilight!
11:31:14 – even dimmer,
wierder light; can still see the Tetons.
11:32:16 – the
crescent Sun is like the best, thinnest new Moon I have ever seen.
11:33 – very weird dim
light ... perhaps unexplainable.
 |
| The Tetons in the Moon’s shadow. |
 |
| Moon’s shadow fast approaching. |
 |
| Moon’s shadow almost here. |
11:36:09 – Totality begins; took photos of Sun’s
corona; probably could not so easily have done this without my new camera (Panasonic
Lumix fz70). I did not perceive the star
Regulus with the naked eye (the corona was much brighter than I had expected),
but it showed up in my first overexposed photos … I had to under expose by 2-1/2
f-stops to get a proper shot of the corona.
Venus was brightly visible off to the west of the Sun, but did not see Sirius
or the stars of Orion; I suspect some were visible, but a nearby tree blocked
the view in that direction, and I did not have time to make the few steps to
see … there is only so much time available during totality, and boy, does it go
so fast! A lone cricket began to chirp, or
perhaps it was a tree frog.
 |
| Totality … Sun’s Corona & the First Magnitude Star
Regulus, made out just below left. |
11:39-approximately – Tetons back in the sunlight;
overexposed in the photos.
 |
| Tetons back in Sunlight. |
 |
| Totality almost over. |
11:39:30 – totality
ends.
11:48:00 – definitely warmer
in temperature.
13:01:24 – last
contact of the Moon’s disc observed (through the eclipse specs, of course); by this
time I had moved back down to my campsite.
And those were my
eclipse notes. The next day while
looking at the forest meadow, I am camped in, through my sunglasses, I realized
that the light was similar to the early state of dimming of the light during
the eclipse, perhaps as first noted at 11:10, in my notes above. I wonder if more dense sunglasses would give
a sense of the light, as it was even closer to totality? Would the wierdness effect be present?
Even here I was not
alone. There was a grouping of two or
three trailers, about a hundred yards away on the edge of a grove of trees, which
I suspect were all acquaintances. They
were not positioned to see the Moon’s shadow crossing the landscape from the
Tetons. Then there was a camper pickup
truck down the road about 300 yards with a couple of people. They were in a position to see the Tetons, if
they so desired. These neighbors were
luckily in quiet awe of the event, with no pop concert shouting … I was
grateful.
All in all this was
worth the 843 mile meandering trek north from central Colorado to see,
especially since there are so many other landscapes seen and yet to see that
were not in my original plans of travel.
It would have been nice to have had clear skies back in 1999, for the
Cornish eclipse, so I could have had better knowledge for this one, but I guess
this was my once in a lifetime eclipse experience; unforgettable! If you ever have a chance to see a Solar
Eclipse, by all means I highly recommend that you do so. It gives you a sense of the mechanics of our
little corner of the Universe unlike any other event.
For you tech-heads the
pigments used in the painting at the top were:
Imprimatura: W&N Venetian
Red
Drawing: W&N
Ultramarine Deep
Painting: W&N Venetian
Red, Cobalt & Ultramarine Deep Blues, also a touch of Cerulean.
Rublev:
Blue Ridge Yellow Ochre, Italian Burnt Sienna, Lead White #1.
