It was talked about for weeks on every newscast. Worse than when they warned Ralphie that he’d shoot his eye out with the Red Rider BB gun… “You’ll burn your eyeballs out if you look into the sun without the special glasses….” Yes, we are talking about the freaking eclipse of 2017.
Droves and droves of people flocked to a 70-mile-wide strip of land that covered places in the USA that you would never think of ever visiting. Motels filled up and gouged travelers who dared to get into the path of totality, all leading up to a 2 minute 40-second-long moment where the moon passed in front of the sun and blocked its light.
I’m a sucker too! On August 21. 2017 mom and I drove down to Cincinnati, while not in the path of totality, it would be 90% coverage. Not knowing what we would encounter as we headed out to Ault Park. What we found at 10:30 am was a group of volunteers and sky watchers from the Cincinnati Observatory setting up a canopy and 2 telescopes. We left to find food and came back at 12:00 with there only being a few more people.
My gear for the day was as follows:
- Canon Rebel t7i with a Canon 75-300 F3.5-5.6 III kit lens
- Canon Rebel t3i with a Canon 55-250 F3.5-5.6 IS II Lens
- 2 tripods
- Remote releases, 1 with intervalometer
- Solar filters for both lenses.
I started by shooting this before photo at 12:36 PM, as you can see the sun is the only thing that is showing through the filter. It is important that the filters stay in place as the telephoto lenses are basically focusing the sun’s energy onto the sensor of the camera. Imagine getting the largest powered magnifying glass and aligning the sun and the back of your hand or some paper… that is what the sun will do to the extremely sensitive camera sensor.
The eclipse has now started at 1:03, you can see an indentation at the 1 to 2 o’clock position
You can see it a little bit better at this 1:06 pm photo.
2 Minutes later at 1:08
By 1:18 you can without a doubt see the moon moving in on the sun.
1:28 and I have adjusted the exposure to capture the shadows that are on the sun
1:37 and the moon is taking over more and more of the sun.
At about 1:50 about half of the sun appears to be covered.
At 2:03 and 2:12 you would be fooled into thinking that this was a crescent moon, but it is not.
At 2:19 there is just a sliver left of the sun. The temperature started to cool off, the light looked like somebody used the dimmer to turn it down and the color of the light took on this pink hue.
At 2:26 we are almost at the peak that we will be seeing outside the path of totality
At 2:29 and 59 seconds the “peak” of the eclipse has happened, the moon is centered into the sun from left to right, from here the sun will continue to the right of the frame while the moon is continuing to the left of the frame.
At Just 2:33 and 2:35 you can see the moon and sun parting ways; by now most people are just about ready to leave
At 2:51 the moon is moving away from the sun and bringing back more of the sun.
By 3:07 the moon and sun are almost separated.
20 Minutes later at 3:27
Another 10 minutes at 3:38 pm
At 3:42 the clouds began to roll in and soften the sun
The sun and moon would continue to part ways for another 15 minutes while everybody that was still there packed up and left
This was a wonderful experience and I do hope that nobody trashed their eclipse glasses, as you will need them in 7 years when on April 8, 2024 there will be another total solar eclipse, which this time will pass through Logan County.