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Old 08-09-2017, 03:18 PM
alphamone
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alphamone is offline
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Canberra
Posts: 73
Finally got home from my trip. Remaking the post that I wrote up on the day but accidentally posted in the completely wrong thread.

At the start we had thick cloud that made first contact almost imperceptible through glasses, though with my filtered camera I was able to get a few (haze blurred) pictures of the early eclipse. As the partial phase progressed, the haze got thinner, and the cloud to the southwest (which is where the wind was coming from) kept promising that the clouds would thin, but the thinner clouds never seemed to come.

It wasn't until about five minutes before totality that I noticed a distinct contrail through the clouds that I realized that the clouds HAD thinned, it was just that because the sun had been dimming, the clouds looked much thicker than they actually were. In the last few minutes before totality, the crickets and other bugs started getting very loud.

Totality itself was very impressive (impressive enough, that as previously mentioned, I forgot about my video camera's filter), even if it was slightly blurred by the mild high-level haze, which meant I needed to use a far higher ISO for my camera than I wanted to. Even with the haze and noise I my photos still show the details of the corona (I haven't gotten round to making cropped versions yet).

In the 15 seconds before third contact, the top right of the corona turned red (presumably the last layers of plasma before the photosphere) which was really impressive.

After totality ended, the insect noise returned, and so did the clouds. Just five minutes after third contact, the sun became completely covered by clouds, at least for around twenty minutes.

The difference in temperature between totality and the last few minutes before 4th contact was dramatic. In totality, the temperature was very pleasant (probably mid 20s C) and when it reached the end of the partial phase, it turned back to stinking hot humid mid 30s C midwest weather.
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