I have been camped up in the mountains just east of Jackson, WY since Thursday. A bit of cloud cover this morning had me worried but it pushed through and off to the races we were.
Totality. Well. I might be able to describe it but I’m eating a pretty tasty burger right now and fixing to hit the road for Rocky Mountain National Park so the words wouldn’t come easy. At least, the words that might do it any kind of justice.
The difference between 99% and Totality is stunning. I fear I’ve become a totality snob now.
I pulled one image at totality off of the camera while breaking down camp, just to have something to post.
This was a last minute trip so I didn’t have time to order solar filters. I stopped at Ace Hardware up here and bought a Mylar emergency blanket. I cut 2 squares of that with a cto gel sandwiched inbetween and then gorilla taped to a cardboard filter holder. For totality, a CTO gel and a custom white balance.
This is pretty close to uncropped (shooting at 750mm equivalent). Had it pretty high in the frame so took some off the bottom and then a hair off the left to center it.
Really nice shot! I love seeing the corona coming around the sides. We had about 83% coverage here (Jackson, Mississippi), but it was still a really cool experience.
I didn’t know if it would be possible to catch any stars with a long, slow lens shooting at ISO100 and at about 750mm - but yup, it is. Here’s Regulus, of the Leo Constellation, in the bottom left of this frame.
That video makes me feel better about forgetting to take the solar filter off my camera during totality. I got a total of two shots of totality, one is garbage and the other one is pretty bad. Here’s a few from the day… (I also went to Wyoming, a little south of Douglas)
(This is approximately 6 seconds in real time, the GIF may take a different amount of time to play. Oh, and I also apparently bumped my camera while I was doing this.)
Jackson area wasn’t nearly as bad as predicted. Casper had been billing itself for a while as, “THE place to watch the eclipse.” We hit a small amount of traffic south of Jackson and then quite a bit heading back to Colorado at Laramie. Made it from Jackson to Estes Park, CO only about 30-45 mins delayed from normal driving times.
Your pictures with filter were quite good and as clear as anything I was able to get using some nice equipment. Had you remembered to remove the filter you would have had some amazing shots of totality.
I also had a brain fart during. Forgot to empty a digital card on a video unit shooting the crowd reactions and light changes. The card filled 60 seconds before totality. My backup worked OK but it had automatic light level settings and didn’t show the real to life darkness.
Ah well. Statistics say I should live another 7 years for the next one.
BTW: Seeing your traffic pictures make me so happy that I booked a 3 day stay at a campground in the path many months in advance. Took photos on a restricted lake shore 100 ft from my campsite. Drove home the next day in normal weekday traffic.
