Mini Full Eclipse - North Shore of Lake Erie

[Zbip57]

This was a truly AWESOME experience!

The moon casts a 90-mile wide shadow that races along the path shown in the map. The red tag is where we watched from.


My brother met us there. He's a pro photographer/videographer, so he's sure to have better stuff eventually. I brought along my 91-yr-old mom and her friend. None of us had ever before experienced a total solar eclipse. Definitely gotta do this again!


It is so freaky! The moon's shadow is like an open portal into space. It's a totally dark night-time sky, with stars visible, but down below it's still broad daylight all around the horizon, along the edges of that 90-mile wide disk.


It took about an hour from when the moon first touched the edge of the sun until full coverage, then only 3mins 8secs of darkness as the shadow raced over us (totality), then another hour until the sun was completely uncovered.

Here are three videos for y'all. The time-lapses are really neat because I think we totally missed seeing a lot of this happening at the time. We were blind while looking through those dark eclipse glasses. Because it happens so slowly in real time, we didn't really notice the approaching (and subsequently leaving) shadow in the sky.

During the 3 minutes of totality it's safe to look directly at the sun without eclipse glasses and you can see the corona of the sun's atmosphere. But the moment the first tiny sliver of sun becomes uncovered again, it's immediately far too bright and dangerous to look directly at the glaring sun. If I ever get this chance again, I'll leave off the special glasses and skip trying to look at the sun, instead just concentrate on watching what's happening all around us.

1-Minute Time-lapse.

1-Minute Time-lapse from the Mavic Mini drone's view.

6-Minute 360° Spherical View with sound using an Insta360 One .
Click-and-Drag on the video while it's playing to rotate the viewing angle to see all around the horizon!

If you have the time, here's an earlier 23-minute video from Destin ("SmarterEveryDay") enthusiastically explaining why you *HAVE TO* go see an eclipse. He interviews Dr. Telepun (Mr.Eclipse), who created the Solar Eclipse Timer app that I used on my phone. Dr. Telepun shows the various science stations that he sets up to document and explain all the various phenomena to watch out for during an eclipse. Really good video!

It was an AWESOME experience!

If you missed this opportunity, here's where to start planning for the next one...

 

[GFields]

Nice photos and videos!

 

[sarahb]

I was afraid to even try.

 

[Pstreicher]

I really enjoyed those. Since I live in Tampa I didn't bother to go outside to look. 57% is not a big deal to me. That spherical video was super cool. Thanks for all of your good work!

 

[Zbip57]

Since I live in Tampa I didn't bother to go outside to look. 57% is not a big deal to me.

I've seen partial eclipses before and, yup, not such a big deal. But a total eclipse when viewed from within the path of totality, that's AWESOME. Looking up and being able to see stars through that weird hole in the sky in mid-afternoon, that was really cool.

If I ever get the chance again, I'll make sure to find a location on the centre of the path (along that blue line). The period of darkness lasts the longest along that line. Toward the outer edges of the path the darkness lasts a much shorter time. Anywhere outside the edges of the path, it doesn't get dark at all because even a tiny sliver (or more) of blinding sun remains exposed.

Even where we were located, a bit north of the centreline, the disk of the moon's shadow was noticeably biased south of us. Behind us to the north, more of the sky was brighter as less area was covered by the shadow. And south of us the darkness seemed to extend to the horizon. Along the centreline of the path of totality, we would have seen the edges of the shadow ring evenly distributed in the sky all the way around the horizon.

At the edges of the shadow it looks like a spectacular orange sunset. But instead of the sun setting in the west, it's setting all the way around the horizon. Freaky!

 

[JimSteadman]

Liked the vids. Thanks for sharing. I am directly across Lake Erie, in Erie PA. While we had rain in the AM, the sky cleared sufficiently for us to clearly see the totality of the eclipse through some thin, high clouds. Thought about putting the drone up over the city to record the light-dark-light effect, but traffic forecasts were awful, so I decided to stay home and view from here. As you can see, we had a lot of folks on the beach and as totality began, the temperature dropped sharply, birds went to roost and at the moment of totality there was a mighty roar from the folks on the beach. The roar was repeated when the light returned. It was an absolutely awesome experience.

 

[Robert Prior]

I was in Hamilton (walked in from Burlington to avoid getting stuck in the post-eclipse traffic jam on the bridges), so had 92 seconds of totality. (My friend had to work the next day so didn't want to do a really long drive. Still took over two hours to get home via city streets.)

I'm kicking myself for not setting up my 360° camera (which I had with me) — just totally forgot I had it in my bag until the skies were clearing just before totality (at which point I didn't want to spoil the experience fiddling with equipment).

We had some stratocumulus clouds at totality so didn't see any stars, but at least didn't have clouds like Niagara Falls did! Twenty minutes later and we'd have had blue skies.

I had friends in Toronto say they weren't going anywhere because "98% is close enough". I couldn't make them understand that partial and total eclipses are two different experiences.

 

[Kuiper Denizen]

I traveled west into West Virginia to get a 95% eclipse. We worried for the whole week previous about the skies being overcast. They weren’t, and we considered ourselves lucky.

After seeing the shadow of the moon moving across a cloud cover overhead I’m not so sure that’s not the most dramatic view of an eclipse!

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Zbip57]

After seeing the shadow of the moon moving across a cloud cover overhead I’m not so sure that’s not the most dramatic view of an eclipse!

Exactly!

Seeing the disk of the sun covered by the moon (even just partially) is pretty cool. But unless you have at least a pair of binoculars, a good camera, or a telescope, you're not going to see any solar flares at total coverage unless you have exceptionally keen eyesight. The corona shining around the edges of the moon is still bright enough so that you can't make out much detail by eyesight alone. At least I couldn't.

And while wearing those dark eclipse glasses, everything else other than the sun is pitch black, so you'll miss seeing that approaching shadow. You can safely take the glasses off at totality once the sun is completely obscured by the moon, but by then the shadow will already be overhead.

It's seeing that dark shadow approaching, then being able to spot stars through the opening, and watching the shadow then leave, that certainly was DRAMATIC. I now totally understand why eclipse-chasers are so obsessed with travelling around the world to experience the next event.