Solar Eclipse - Cedar City Gets Bird's Eye View

[Indy Coug]

http://www.weather.com/news/annular-eclipse-view-20120516

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=204109457876052646118.0004c025a9d29b27d3bd6&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=37.26531,-113.071289&spn=12.788988,28.520508&z=5&source=embed?msa=0&msid=204109457876052646118.0004c025a9d29b27d3bd6&ie=&t=m&ll=37.26531,-113.071289&spn=12.788988,28.520508&z=5&output=embed

[ERCougar]

I didn't read the article, so it may already say this, but actually, the best spot is Kanarraville. Could be funny to see how many descend on the little town.

We've got our viewing glasses all ready! Transit of Venus is visible a few weeks later.

[Scott R Nelson]

I'm going to drive to Fernley to view it.

I don't intend to try to look at the sun, with or without filters. It's good enough to hold up a piece of cardboard or something with a small hole in it and look at the light in the middle of the shadow. I hope to find a place near some trees to get some photos of interesting shadows.

The only other more interesting place to view it, in my opinion, is in Texas or wherever the sun will be setting while the moon is still in front of it. If the conditions are right, you'll be able to look at a red sun with a chunk removed.

I was going to post photos next week in one of the photography threads, but I'll probably post them here instead. Who knows if I'll get any good ones or not?

________________________________

On a related note, I had planned to attend church at our normal time from 9:00 to noon, go home, have lunch, then drive the 150 miles to Fernley, before the eclipse has started. That one day, our building will be used for Stake Conference for another stake, and our meeting has been pushed back to 1:00 - 4:00, which gets out too late to make it to Fernley in time. So I had to track down another ward in the area in a different building that meets early, and I'll show up as a visitor. Our Stake President said that we only do this about once every ten years or so. Interesting how our plans can get messed up by little things like that.

[ERCougar]

Eclipse starting!
Kanarraville is a zoo.

[Dwight Schr-ute]

Drove up to St. George to check it out. Party at ER's!

[Shaka]

I've been checking it out post fireside at the Huntington Beach Stake Center. Decided it would be safer to aim my iPad camera at it and look at the screen.

Wifi works here btw.

[Shaka]

I've been checking it out post fireside at the Huntington Beach Stake Center. Decided it would be safer to aim my iPad camera at it and look at the screen.

Wifi works here btw.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[myboynoah]

Saw it this morning in Tokyo.

[happyone]

It's behind some clouds here in Davis County

[Dwight Schr-ute]

I fell in to a burning ring of fire.

[Omaha 680]

Down in Zion National Park for the weekend and we got a great view in Springdale.

[Scott R Nelson]

On Sunday my wife and I drove up to Fernley, since it looked like the closest place near the center of the eclipse path. I looked on Google Maps for a park and didn't see much, but there was a fairly large one on the east end of town - Fernley Out-Of-Town Park. Remind me to never complain about any park in Pleasanton or Folsom again. It was the kind of park where the kids can play in the dirt if they want, and there is a little grass and a few picnic tables. Plus a bunch of sports fields.

We got there before anything started, then as soon as we could tell that a little chunk of the sun was finally missing, this cloud showed up and blocked the sun from us. We waited about five minutes and finally decided that it didn't look like it was going away, so we headed west until we were out from under it. The cloud had some pretty colors to it, though:



Going in we had seen a small group setting up a couple of telescopes, so we went back and joined them. That was a good move on our part. These guys were actual astronomers and came prepared. We thought we had traveled far coming from Folsom, but one group had come from Cupertino and the other from Hollister, both quite a bit further away. Here we all are looking through their black glasses at the eclipse:



Others dropped by as the eclipse progressed until we had more than 20 people.

The only thing I brought along for viewing was a piece of cardboard with a nice round hole punched into it with a pencil. It worked basically like this:



I punched more holes in it after a little while, including a bigger one on one side.

Someone else showed up with a different "low-cost" viewer that also showed the progress of the eclipse fairly well:



I tried taking a photo of the sun through the black glasses, but my camera wanted a very long exposure when in the automatic setting, so I got images like this:



After setting it manually to 1/60 second I got this shot:



When we were at the maximum, I totally forgot to try to get another photo with the black glasses.

I wanted to be near some trees for interesting shadows. Here's a shot that I liked doing that:



There were even more intersting shadows on a white Lincoln parked under another tree:



It got quite intersting once the moon was centered:



Here's my low-buck viewer version at the mid-point of the eclipse:



We found other interesting things to do while looking at shadows:

(Oops! over my photo limit - you'll have to click the link to see this one:
[ame]http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c67/scottrnelson/CUF/Eclipse/Eclipse8.jpg[/ame]

We probably could have been more serious about viewing this once in a lifetime eclipse, but my wife and I had a good time the way we did it. Everyone we met was very friendly and those with telescopes were happy to let us keep looking through them and to share their black glasses with anyone who came along.