I know that Lisa has some updates in the pipeline but I wanted to post a picture or two of the total solar eclipse we saw from Kimberly, OR on August 21. My mom would have been proud as we were among the first to arrive right when Azure farms opened their orchards at noon on Friday. We pulled the Scamp in between rows of apple and cherry trees and set up where there was sufficient shade nearby but also sun for the solar panel and sky for the telescopes. We set up camp and waited for our friends to arrive and dinner at 4 PM. After a meal of organic this and heirloom that our friends arrived from California via Crater Lake and we helped set up their camp and caught up for the evening.
Each of the next few evenings my friend Mark and I set up telescopes to make the most of the very clear and dark skies. For folks into the Bortle Scale I would call the skies about a 4 or 3. The Milky Way had tons of structure but there were light domes and there were no naked-eye globular clusters that I could see. Each night our scopes attracted new and different people from surrounding campsites to visit and share the view.
Similarly, during the day Mark set up his cheap, amazing and highly recommended OneSky with a solar filter to observe the Sun. There were some really good sunspots despite the unfavorable solar minimum we are in. The solar scope was a favorite every day but particularly popular during the eclipse.
Total eclipse far exceeded my expectations. The weather was perfect and the view beautiful. As the Moon just about covered the Sun completely we saw the brilliant diamond ring as just one tiny chunk of Sun was left. Special thanks to Xavier Jubier for his Solar Eclipse Maestro software that allowed me to image the eclipse automatically without taking any of my attention during totality. When the eclipse finally went total the sky went deep, deep, blue, a color I have never seen before. I think it was the color Sam Malone (22:30) was talking about. Lighter closer to the Sun and darker further away. Venus was easily visible maybe 20 degrees from the Sun.
The Corona was brilliant white and huge. I don't know if I was able to see prominences in the moment but I sure caught them on camera. All 700 people in the orchard were cheering and hollering for the two minutes and immediately after everyone started talking about where and when the next eclipse was. It was that good.
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