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| taken with my Pixel 4 |
Well, here in lovely Austin, Texas, we were on the edge of the total solar eclipse. Around 1:36 PM Central, we experienced about 90 seconds of totality.
I was, honestly, pretty excited about the eclipse. I've seen probably 4 partial eclipses, including one last summer. And one lunar eclipse back in middle school when my family was on vacation in Mexico and a guy from a restaurant was standing there looking straight up, and because I am that guy, I looked straight up, and me and that guy stopped and enjoyed a lunar eclipse together.
Austin was a big destination for the eclipse, because we are a very hip town for reasons that escape me, but for weeks we've known it was going to be cloudy here. A month ago, to get ahead of how crazy things would get, local and state government got involved and declared a "state of emergency" so they could handle the influx of people supposedly coming in. I heard crazy stories about no way to get a flight in or out for days on either side of today. But I live here, so I didn't really see anything different.
We're expecting usual Austin-Springtime horrible weather over the next 24 hours or so, and so there was a chance we'd all be standing out looking up at the sun getting hit with hail.
But that didn't happen.
The weather sort of held on, delivered some swiftly moving cloud cover that allowed for occasional breaks and thinning of the clouds, so we could see El Sol. Jamie and I were able to head out to the field and retention pond area in our neighborhood where folks brought camp chairs and blankets.
I also brought a box of Moon Pies and distributed them to folks who wanted one.
Folks were kind of quietly excited, and I realized, thanks to my daily viewing of KXAN news and the breathless reporting they'd been doing on the eclipse for what had to have been six weeks in advance, I was quite the know-it-all about the cosmic event.
Do bats come out for an eclipse? NO. It turns out that they work on an internal clock and are not paying attention to the sun.
I tried to take pictures to show the difference in how very dark it did get, but my camera auto-corrected, and you can't see the change.
I've been fighting allergies, so sitting outside was a bit concerning, but given this was a possibly-once-in-a-lifetime event, I girded my loins, and - giving Jamie a headstart to go chat with neighbors, eventually I headed out.
Honestly, it was an amazing event. Writing it down is a little meaningless. You've probably seen plenty of pictures or video. And I'd argue being there with other people to witness the same thing is part of it. For the people who were at big civic events, etc... I get it.
As the moon got into position, the sky absolutely got darker and the temperature dropped several degrees. I wouldn't say the birds went completely quiet, but they certainly toned it down. During totality, a small bird, maybe a finch? flew weirdly close to us, I would guess a bit confused and looking for cover. I'd argue I noticed when the birds came back to making noise again a lot more than when it went away, which might have been gradual.
Likely because we were so close to the edge of the event, and because clouds would disperse light, we didn't experience the same total darkness I saw in Indianapolis or other locations on the same path. I'd say it got as dark as twilight during summer when the light hangs on a long time and you can still see a bit down the street. But the change was *fast*. I was pulling my cardboard glasses on and off to look around, and every time I did, it was noticeably darker in the minutes leading up to the grand event.
My neighbor, Michelle, and I were pondering "oh, yes, you can see exactly why ancient cultures lost their minds about this" and I need to look into what another neighbor was describing about the ancient mounds built by the First People on North America, because I was vaguely aware of them for ceremonial purposes, but not their astronomic/ astrological significance.
As the news had said, the totality was brief, maybe 90 seconds. You can get a rough idea of what the corona or ring looked like in my pics.
And, of course, these pics do it no justice. It was genuinely beautiful and unlike even the partial eclipses I'd seen before. And, due in part to the totality and the clouds, if you weren't just staring, you could look at it with the naked eye.
The sliver of light left just before totality is kind of lovely and almost sad, and then... the ring. In our case it was white light shining through the clouds, just shimmering around the perfect circle of the moon. Then, when the event is passing, you get the diamond on the ring as the first real rays of the sun break out at the edge and a spot of light formed on, to my eye, the lower left angle. And it's really kind of lovely.
Did I eat a Moon Pie during totality? Friends, you know I did, and it was perfect.
I don't know that I'm ready to chase eclipses around the planet, but it was something that will be locked up in my mind's eye, ready to remember. Glad I saw it with Jamie and our neighbors.
