Week 9. 6. Backlit

Monday 21st August 2017.  I was so excited when my son said – “let’s go catch the eclipse” !! –  We booked a hotel not far away for a day before so that the grandchildren could see a few places on the way down from Ohio to Kentucky.  We made it to the the parking lot of the Kentucky Downs racecourse.  We knew we’d just have to stop “somewhere” depending on the traffic,  once we knew we were in the “zone” of totality.    I’d wandered around a bit – lots of people with enormous telescopes with cameras attached – everyone sporting “eclipse” glasses that we wore for the first hour as the Moon moved between the Sun and the Earth,

We could gradually feel the air getting a little cooler and it was so still somehow and a strange feeling and color to everything, difficult to describe.  About 10 minutes before totality when 80% of the Sun is covered the light really started to fall off – I heard it described as a metallic gray-blue hue – which really is a good description.  The street lights started to come on and on the horizon – 360 degrees around us, was a golden sunset color – amazing. Then we could see the stars! – in the middle of the day – just amazing – I’m getting goosebumps again just thinking about it.

The photo is my son, having removed his glasses, as the eclipse was total – for a total of 2 minutes 26 seconds – how I wish it could have been longer – it was just so amazing. I did get a good photo of the eclipse – but I liked this one looking around at the general scene.

On Monday 8th April 2024 there is another total eclipse taking in a huge area of the USA and I urge you to make it a date if you can.