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Back from my vacation, a few impressions: It was like it was described and anticipated in the various articles. There was some traffic congestion as we approached the totality zone. It did get cooler when the coverage was about 80%. The totality was eerie and magnificent. We had about 2 minutes of it. The corona looks like really bad hair, very asymmetric, stretching out to a distance comparable to the radius of the Sun. Hard to capture on camera, some of the best pictures show it, but not mine. My only regret is that I was too busy taking pictures instead of just looking at it during totality.My wife said the whole experience (people streaming to their destinations, all looking at the same thing,the strangeness of the sky) reminded her of the movie Close encounters of the third kind.
A few pics, starting with the a moment before totality.
I was lucky earlier today to capture both clouds in one shot. The darker clouds that cover most of the sky, but especially at the lower and right side of the picture are stratocumulus. In the upper middle and left, they have some holes that allow you to see the higher layer of altocumulus stratiformis, the white clouds.Now, stratocumulus are not always so dark, so that is not the best indicator, but the size of their elements is clearly larger.
Hope this helps a bit.
Hillarious! It was indeed very hard to find anything 100+ miles outside the totality zone. We were extremely lucky to pick up a cancellation. A small B&B room for $200, normally renting for $50. Free market in action.
Actually it’s a pretty narrow band for the total eclipse, some 70 miles. It’s advertised as the “great American eclipse” because the totality band crosses the country from west to east. I planned my vacation so that I could cross that band (in Nebraska or Wyoming) on that day, but I am getting nervous. I read everywhere that there will be large crowds who, like me, will want to get in that zone. A huge traffic jam. I hope they’re the usual press exaggerations.
Of course, a few clouds can mess things up too :-)
Actually, I was watching a Cb two days ago. I went out to the edge of the water to get a good view. It was not a really big Cb, but it had a huge canopy, blown by the wind way back over my head.
Hygge, I had to google it, but learned a new expression, roarie-bummler.
I was watching Cu’s too yesterday. They were not bummlers, too windy. They were changing all the time. I hope you can watch this short video. (I remember you saying it’s broken on your computer. Maybe it’s fixed by now.)
I think I agree with Hygge and in support of this I will peddle my short time lapse video.
The cloud in my video was a Cb, I know because I saw it on the radar as well. It looks like some Cb’s are initially strong enough to reach an inversion (maybe the troposphere) and spread out in an anvil (“incus”). But the supply of moisture and energy dries up and they loose their base.
But not to come to a definitive conclusion, it may be a cloud producing precipitation that does not reach the ground, a thick virga, that is dragging down some of the cloud. I do see some precipitation in your second picture, so that’s not too far fetched.
I think one of the tricks is to continue your observation for some time and see how things evolve.
Anyway, nice to hear from you.
Yes, indeed, Michael.
Laurence, those photographs are very nice, especially the rainbow, full and nicely centered. Thanks for the link.
Hygge, you blew my cover. Yes, that’s me. I live in Queens, a borough of NY City. I am about 6 miles east from the Empire State Building. I can see it from a slightly higher point in a park near me. Here is a shot with a 200mm lens. (Hope the link works.)
https://goo.gl/photos/TiJ2WBtgybv7G7Lp8
You gotta fix your computer to play videos. Time lapse is the next big thing :-)
Thank you Michael. I used a less sophisticated camera, my iPhone 6. iPhones have time lapse as a standard picture taking mode. The frequency is one shot per second. When done, it puts the movie together from individual shots by itself. So very convenient.
I recently bought a sony alpha 6300 and when I really learn how to use it I will try some time lapse using an intervalometer, which I also purchased. But not sure how to make the movie after that. I hope your future 6D has the smarts, as well as the capability to make the movie in the camera, so that you don’t have to download 30 or so pictures for every second of movie.
Also wondering if there is a difference in the quality of the pictures when they are intended for a movie. I suppose you need less resolution for movie frames. Which means less storage needed. But you would have to tell the camera ahead of time what resolution you want.
Please let me know what you learn, I am interested.
Back from my vacation, a few impressions: It was like it was described and anticipated in the various articles. There was some traffic congestion as we approached the totality zone. It did get cooler when the coverage was about 80%. The totality was eerie and magnificent. We had about 2 minutes of it. The corona looks like really bad hair, very asymmetric, stretching out to a distance comparable to the radius of the Sun. Hard to capture on camera, some of the best pictures show it, but not mine. My only regret is that I was too busy taking pictures instead of just looking at it during totality.
I was lucky earlier today to capture both clouds in one shot. The darker clouds that cover most of the sky, but especially at the lower and right side of the picture are stratocumulus. In the upper middle and left, they have some holes that allow you to see the higher layer of altocumulus stratiformis, the white clouds.
