The North American Solar Eclipse, Aug. 21, 2017 Options

[PDP8E]

As all of you know, by now, there will be an amazing Total Solar Eclipse this summer in North America stretching from coast to coast, and basically from 10 AM to 2 PM local time, from west to east.
An estimated 75 million people will be less than a half day's drive away from totality.
My family and I will be in Missouri that day, prepared to zip east or west in case of inclement weather.
Do you plan on observing this event?

[Tom Dahl]

My wife and I live in Massachusetts, and had been planning an Eclipse vacation to the western US for many months (should I say Moons). We settled on central Oregon, near the tiny town of Ashwood. We were on the site of a ranch and agate mining claim, happily paying the owners for the privilege of being completely safe and comfy on their property. We had been staying in Gresham OR (which is a few miles east of Portland) 152 miles away from that site, which was the closest reasonable lodging I could find 8 months ago. We left Gresham at 4:30 AM and reached the site a little before 7:00AM (totality was to occur at about 10:22 AM local time). During the drive we watched Venus and the constellation of Orion climb into the sky before sunrise. We passed many little pull-outs and larger parking lots along the road overflowing with cars and eclipse watchers, and a large rest area that was full of cars; a few US Army or National Guard troops were standing around the by-then blocked-off entrance along with Highway department staff.

While waiting at our site for first contact we explored the area and the small mining claim. There were a couple of dozen other cars scattered over a few acres of the property. Then we settled down to watch the sky show. The forecast was for clear sky, though thin high clouds crept overhead; thankfully these did not turn out to be any problem. It gradually grew cooler and cooler, despite the expected daily high of 90F. It also grew dimmer and dimmer very gradually. By the time totality neared, only a couple of minutes away, the air was very cool and I felt quite chilly in short pants and a short-sleeve shirt. During the final minute or so before totality the ground and surrounding countryside was visibly getting dimmer. Freaky feeling! About 30 seconds before the start of totality I could see Venus high overhead.

Then - totality. This was the first viewing of such a spectacle for me. Amazing, incredible, stunning! I've been interested in Astronomy since I was an adolescent 45 years ago, and have seen scads of photos of the fully-eclipsed Sun. But there it was! Photographs do not do it justice. We were seeing it live, up in the sky in front of us all. It was bigger that I was somehow expecting it to look with the naked eye, and the corona was definitely brighter that I expected. Just beautiful, a ring of wispy white plasma surrounding a black perfect circle. I took a few hand-held photos, having decided months ago not to fuss very much over photography (even though I'm also a keen amateur photographer). To my eye the corona looked close to the third of my photos, the one with the longest exposure. Venus was brilliant overhead. I did not think to look for Orion, though the thin cloud might have obscured it in any case. The upper edge of the Sun had bits of red - a few prominences - visible with the naked eye.

The approximately two minutes of totality went by very fast, and then the brilliant sparkle of the third-contact diamond ring flashed out, with the remaining corona still visible. A second or two later the tiny sliver of the crescent Sun was once again blinding. Here are three cropped photographs taken with a 200mm telephoto lens (on a Nikon D300 APC-format digital camera), along with a wide-angle shot that gives a good impression of what it looked like in person.