The Great North American Eclipse of 08Apr24

A tale of two sightings

 

“In rating natural wonders, on a scale of 1 to 10, a total eclipse of the Sun is a million.”

-         Fred Espenak

 

Progression of eclipse as captured with a small telescope at Mansfield, Ohio, USA

 

This is an account of the agony and the ecstasy associated with a successful chase of the Great North American total solar eclipse of 08 April 24 at two different locations in the USA by two Indian amateur astronomers who made their personal journeys from far off Mysore, India.

[For a detailed curtain raiser to this event, please see my last blog article here. For my other articles on total/annular solar eclipses, see 1, 2 ,3, 4 and 5.]

Anticipation

Ever since I saw the total solar eclipse of 21Aug17 at Clarkesville near Nashville, Tn, in the USA, the one to follow this year in the same country was on my radar constantly.  I started planning for it after watching a spectacular annular solar eclipse in my own country on 26Jan19 along with my longtime associate and amateur astronomer Mr Krishnamurthy Mudugodu (Murthy for short) and others at Bekal Beach on coastal Kerala. Though Murthy’s interest was equally aroused, he saw a firm opportunity for viewing the Great North American Eclipse only recently.

Our plans turned out to be intentionally divergent – mine to settle for a location in southern Texas, and his for a northeasterly location, in Ohio state.  After reviewing logistic and climatic factors, we settled on Waco, Texas, and Mansfield, Ohio respectively, hoping that both, or at least one of us, would end up lucky enough to view the much-anticipated event at a time of the year when weather and cloud coverage were rather highly unpredictable.

Expectation

Detailed interactive maps of this and other eclipses are readily available on several websites.  Particularly useful was this website where, apart from information in meticulous detail, the expected progression of the eclipse could also be simulated for any given location.  The predicted eclipse parameters for Waco, Tx and Mansfield, Ohio are shown in the maps below:

My choice of Waco was dictated partly by the fact that the duration of totality there was as much as 4 min, 13 sec.   Murthy settled for about a minute lower, but both durations are typically longer than can be expected for most total solar eclipses.   But the overriding consideration was the visibility of the totality phase of the eclipse; here we were both treading on uncertain grounds.  When it comes to weather, and particularly to cloud cover, luck plays a huge role. As it turned out, we were both equally lucky.

Preparation

Considering that I had to travel half way round the world from home, I laid aside all thoughts of carrying any of my telescopes and accessory equipment for a non-amateur style observation and recording of the event.  Instead, I settled for simple hand-held equipment, such as a pair of binoculars fitted with a solar filter for visual observation, and a 25x zoom Panasonic Lumix camera, also fitted with a similar filter for basic photography (see picture below). Even here, I opted for a light-weight 8x40 Cason binoculars instead of my preferred 7x50 Olympus binoculars, and desisted the temptation to carry a massive 125x Nikon Coolpix P1000 Camera.  

For a super-senior citizen on the wrong side of 85, and all alone on a month-long foreign trip that extended to Mexico and Canada as well, travelling light was a necessity.  Moreover, I had to be able to hold the equipment steady with both hands to watch an event unfolding rather rapidly at an uncomfortably high altitude on a hot afternoon. I therefore focused on merely watching the event with my eyes rather than recording it since there were plenty of others to do the latter, including Murthy.  Being merely a senior citizen, Murthy suffered less from such limitations, and had the additional advantage of travelling with his family, with the prospect of others joining him at the venue. He carried several items of equipment, including a small portable telescope. He had also improvised a number of useful attachments to enhance the visibility of the event. 

Weather Outlook

We started looking up weather predictions for eclipse day at the two locations at least a fortnight in advance; they were definitely not encouraging. About a week before, there were no significant changes. Three or four days before, the outlook turned distinctly hostile, with both rain and extensive cloud coverage forecast over Waco at least, about an hour on either side of totality, which was around 1:35 pm local time. For me, visions of a bygone experience in distant China way back in 22 July 2009 started taking shape (see here).  There was nothing I could do but mark time with increasing unease. Murthy’s experience couldn’t have been any less agonizing.  He was beset with even greater uncertainty since he was to decide on a location only just a few days ahead.

Journey

I reached Houston from Bangalore on 5th April and proceeded to Austin Tx two days later after touring the Johnson Space Center which had been heavily waterlogged during my last visit to the USA.  I then made it to Waco, Tx by bus on the eventful day.  I had settled for the open grounds adjacent to the McLane Football Stadium as the venue, where public viewing had been organized by the Baylor University authorities.  My travel itinerary was inflexible, and I had really no plan B if Waco had proved untenable. I had considered Hillsboro as an option, but gave up the idea when I found its weather pattern was not much different from Waco.

Based in Durham, North Carolina, Murthy started his long road journey with his family on 5th April, with halts at Blacksburg and Johnstown near Columbus on the way, joined by friends at both places. Before proceeding to the eventual venue at Mansfield, he had time for an elaborate rehearsal of the sequence of activities that were to unfold on the eventful day.  He also had ample time to soak in the beautiful unpolluted night sky and take delight in locating familiar objects, but at a higher latitude (40^o N) than he was accustomed to at home (12^o.5 N). His itinerary was somewhat flexible, with Springfield as an alternate venue.  He dropped the idea when he realized that the duration of totality there was almost a minute less, and the extra minute at Mansfield was, in his own words, ‘worth its weight in gold’. They reached the beautiful Kingwood Gardens in Mansfield early morning and began their long day’s activities amidst picturesque surroundings.

Weather

When I left Austin by an early morning bus for Waco on eclipse day, one look at the skies and my worst fears threatened to come true. It was as dark and overcast as I had seen anywhere for a long time.  The best that happened by the time I reached the bus station at Waco was a distinctly clear silver shading to the dark clouds.  Buoyed up by this discovery, I leisurely walked up for about an hour to the great big football stadium whose backyards were being thrown open for public viewing, at a price.  After a long wait due to bureaucratic delays, I finally entered the ‘reserved’ space around the stadium a part of which can be seen in the picture below around noontime when the sky had begun to undergo a remarkable transformation. 

As always when I am traveling, my daughter Asha kept tab of my exact whereabouts with live tracking on her mobile!  Below is a screenshot she sent me minutes after I had reached my location initially.

By this time, I was acutely aware that the location behind the stadium afforded no protection from the Sun and no elevated place to sit and watch the eclipse comfortably.  So, I moved out of the enclosure hurriedly and shifted to a place adjacent to the stadium which shielded me from the direct Sun to just the right extent without affecting my view. More importantly, there were a row of concrete blocks to sit on or lean against as and when needed.  Here is a picture of one of them, right next to a precious shade-giving tree (barely visible to the right), with the equipment resting on my folded overcoat. This turned out to be my savior for the day!

Murthy rang up from Mansfield with the cheerful news that the sky was decently clear there and he had begun to deploy his instruments. It looked like we might be able to see the eclipse after all, defying the agonizing expectations.  I checked the latest weather prediction for Waco, and found to my delight that the previous gloomy figures had been pushed forward by two hours – just the time needed to complete the totality phase unobstructed. It was as if the elements had conspired to favour me, yet again, for the seventh time in a row!

Partial phase

The 80-minute-long partial phase of the Great North American Eclipse had begun and my excitement began to grow with every bite of the mighty Sun the puny Moon had eaten away relentlessly.  Here is a sequence of this phase I captured with my Lumix camera, set at full 25x optical zoom and auto-focus:

For the most part of the partial phase, clouds were playing hide and seek with the Sun, without blotting it out altogether.

Murthy’s sequence of superior quality pictures taken with his small refractor telescope are displayed as a composite visual at the beginning of this article.

Totality at Waco!

As the Sun’s disk was being gobbled up by a rapidly advancing moon, there was a noticeable drop in both brightness and temperature of the surroundings, and this was a welcome relief too from the harsh Sun.

As beginning of totality (second contact) approached, everything around us started dimming, the temperature dropped noticeably and produced a soothing effect, the heightened excitement was palpable, and it gave way to indescribable amazement at the sight of a spectacular diamond ring in a flash, which disappeared almost instantaneously to reveal the fabled solar corona which is visible only on such an occasion. To my surprise the corona looked like a small symmetrical ring around the Sun, and indeed some viewers close to me remarked that it was the ring of fire.  Of course, it could not be, because we were watching a total eclipse, not an annular one that could also be seen in that part of the world on 23^rd October last year.  Perhaps it is no wonder that it appeared like a ring of fire because the now totally cloudless sky around the Sun could still be seen faintly.  It was far from the level of darkness normally expected.  I will not go into plausible reasons why this was so.  However, as a visual spectacle, it was a bit of a letdown. Consequently, the star field surrounding the Sun was barely visible, and I had a hard time identifying even the planets Venus and Jupiter. (Also, I could not identify the Bailey’s beads just before the diamond ring effect)

As planned, I refrained from trying out any photography during this 4+ minutes of precious time when one’s vision has to be firmly planted on the corona and its neighborhood.  As planned before, I started looking through my binoculars after removing the filter covering it.

Below is the only picture I took during totality, with my OnePlus Open smartphone, unedited. It does appear to be overexposed, but still the level of brightness around the Sun is surprisingly high. I have no cogent explanation for it at this time.

Below are two pictures, one showing my surroundings sometime during the totality phase and the other a short while after the end of totality. The level of brightness during totality is much higher than I expected:

To conclude the narrative of my observations at Waco, below is a picture of me holding my binoculars, with one side fitted with a solar filter and the other closed, and observing the Sun during a partial phase of the eclipse, well before onset of totality.  My camera is hanging down over my right shoulder.  I also had my OnePlus Open smartphone in my shirt pocket. This simple arrangement served me well. 

The Mansfield Report

I was in constant touch with Murthy before, during and after the event, which was his first experience with a total solar eclipse.  He went to the venue with meticulous preparation, took some fine pictures without compromising on the visual observations, and led a team of both enthusiasts and serious observers on an exciting mission. The picture below apparently shows all the members of his team at the lush green Kingwood Gardens in Mansfield, a far more picturesque place than the one I visited. 

The Mansfield, Ohio Group

Back Row (l to r): Meenakshi Krishnamurthy, Aishwarya Nair, Krishnamurthy Mudugodu, Harshavardhan Chaturvedi and Brian Henning

Front Row: Maithri Krishnamurthy and Shreyas S Bhat

Here is a picture of the Mansfield group deploying all their ware and getting down to business. This is when the staff employed at the garden center mistook them for an eclipse filming crew!

Below is a map of the exact location at which the group set up their day long vigil: 

Here is a picture of Murthy with some of his equipment: 

The picture below depicts the right way to observe any astronomical phenomenon, but viewing the solar eclipse on a hot afternoon may not have been a comfortable experience! 

Below is a summary of Murthy’s key observations conveyed to me both orally and in writing

·      The weather was better than in Waco even early in the morning, and kept improving as the day progressed.  Though there was a haze much of the time, the observations were not significantly affected.

·      One of the group’s pictures of the partial phase taken with a Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope shows three tight groups of sunspots (see picture below)

·      The 8SE telescope can itself be seen in the picture below with its proud owner: 

·      Murthy was able to see the diamond ring effect at third contact, but not at the second.  Here is a picture of it taken with a Sony Alpha A7III mirrorless camera with 7300 mm focal length lens system:

 

·      A careful look at the picture below reveals a row of Bailey’s beads just before the diamond ring effect. This picture was taken with the same camera as above. 

·      Here is a view of the solar corona captured near the midpoint of totality. A more asymmetric and spikier corona was expected since the eclipse is happening near the 11-year peak of solar activity. At this point in time, I have no idea why this was not realized. 

·      The video clip below, shot at Kingwood Gardens in Mansfield during totality, clearly shows darker surroundings* all around than the ones I saw in Waco. This explains why Murthy could see both Venus and Jupiter, and I missed them. Unfortunately, he seems to have missed out on trying to capture the view/s with his smartphone amidst all the excitement. So did I!

[*Murthy describes the darkness he saw as similar to the one after sunset.]

 

Murthy’s final summation:

It was wonderful to experience the gradual decrease in brightness and temperature of the surrounding environment as the totality approached and progressed. There was an eerie silence which immediately turned into a collective gasp of exuberance as the totality began. At this moment we opened all the solar filter caps to capture the totally eclipsed sun on camera. We also took a step back to soak in the moment and directly see the eclipsed sun. Experiencing the spectacular beauty of the total solar eclipse live is something that is hard to express in words.

In the meantime, during the partial eclipse stage a few curious onlookers approached us to see what we were doing, and were enthralled to see the eclipsed sun through various different lenses. The solar filter-capped binoculars were a definite crowd favorite!

In conclusion, it was certainly a memorable experience of a phenomenon of nature which rarely repeats in a particular place. We were one of the early arrivers and the last to leave. We were lucky to have clear sky in spite of partly cloudy weather forecast.

Appendix

[ I had sent the following note to the prospective followers of my blog on the day after I viewed the eclipse]         

Here is some news about the great North American Total Solar Eclipse of yesterday (8Apr24) that I observed successfully from Waco, Texas. It was the seventh time in a row that luck favored me with total/annular solar eclipses. In this context, my last blog article may be relevant. The next article will describe how Krishnamurthy and I were able to explore the event of yesterday from two very different locations in the USA.  At Waco, the sky was totally overcast and made it virtually hopeless for a visible event, but the weather made a miraculous turnaround as the day progressed. The partial phase could be seen playing hide and seek with the clouds, but as totality approached, there were no clouds anywhere near the Sun! I would like to flatter myself that it happened because of my presence at Waco!? Please do look forward to my next blog article, about this event, after my present long trip abroad.

Fast Forward

While Murthy and I are both basking in the glory of the Great North American Eclipse of last month, my sight is fleetingly set on Valencia, Spain for the next total solar eclipse that will last barely a minute, on 12^th August 2026! But, the one to follow a year later on 02 Aug 27 at Luxor, Egypt, lasting a whopping 6 min, 23 sec, would be, to borrow a description from Murthy and twist it appropriately, ‘worth its wait (wait, this is not a spelling mistake!) in gold!’ I hope he and others, especially our mutual friend Ilavenil, who was denied the opportunity to see both the last two great American eclipses, can join me in these adventures.     

Tailpiece

Just two days after I saw the eclipse at Waco, I had the immense satisfaction of visiting Chichen Itza, a complex of fabulous Mayan relics near Cancun in Mexico, rated one of the seven wonders of the world.  This also meant that I had seen all the seven wonders, adding to my collection of seven total/annular solar eclipses spanning equally diverse locations on the globe.  My next blog article will address this aspect of my adventures, so appropriately suggested by one of my acquaintances.