Twice in a Lifetime…by Brad Marks

Welcome back to the light so to speak! I mentioned previously that we were trying to get back home prior to the recent solar eclipse and how Brad and Jan were getting ready to head in the opposite direction (south) for the full experience. Just received Brad’s hot-off-the-press post on the extravaganza and I’m jumping the queues to get this out to you. For the record, in Intrigued time this event->post duration “eclipses” all our previous performance records. Ironically, his midterm review will definitely reflect showing up his management ha. Without further delay, take us back to darkness Brad…

Beep.  Beep.  Beep. 

5:00AM. 

My darn alarm is going off. 

Oh yeah.  Today is the day Jan and I are driving south to see the eclipse.  We live in central Illinois, but the total eclipse path is only covering the very southern tip of the state.  About a dozen other states will be in the path of this total eclipse known as the “Great North American Eclipse”.

In 2017, the eclipse path started at the northwest corner of the U.S., traversed the little town of Chester, IL, and then exited through the southeastern United States.  In 2024, after starting in Mexico (first landfall) the eclipse path travels from the southwest corner to the northeast corner of the U.S.  And guess what?!  It goes right through Chester, IL again.  Hence the title, “Twice in a Lifetime” for those few communities where the 2017 and 2024 paths crossed like a gigantic “X” on the country.  

I talked Jan into going with me.  Yes, it is a very long drive.  We left home at 6am* (see backstory at the end).  At Jan’s urging, I had loaded up the car two days prior to make sure we had everything, and because the day before we left, the weather was predicted to be rainy all day.  It was.  Once we left the house, I was expecting traffic to start earlier because this was the second “Once in a Lifetime” eclipse to visit the general area.  We arrived roughly on time, a couple of hours ahead of the eclipse start time.  Shout out to Popeye (created in Chester, IL) for keeping the heavy clouds away, must be all the spinach he eats.  We had a few wispy clouds that didn’t interfere with the viewing.  This photo shows how it all starts.

Hit the jump to read more about Brad and Jan’s journey into darkness and back!

Jan and I set up the tent, chairs and table, and I started setting up the cameras and the telescope.  All of the cameras and the telescope have either a glass or mylar solar filter on the lenses.  Nothing but the sun can be seen through those filters protecting our gear and our eyes.  Colors vary a bit between the type of filter material and manufacturer, but nearly everything still comes out monochromatic.  Otherwise, the cameras were set up mostly identically for aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance.  (see specific camera setups at the bottom)

SAFETY TIP:  NEVER EVER EVER EVER (raised to infinity) look directly at the sun without solar/eclipse glasses or a filter of some sort designed for that task.  Film negatives do NOT work.  Extra dark sunglasses do NOT work.  Some welders glass works, but they really must be #14 which is designed for solar eclipse observation.  Let me guess . . . some of you tried it anyway.  I know a store with long white canes for sale on your way out because you are going to need it.  Ever use a magnifying glass on ants?  Same thing happens to the back of your eye when you look directly at the sun.

Astute Intrigued readers have already noticed that there are no bird photos and I haven’t mentioned birds once.  What the heck!  This is a bird blog, isn’t it?  Yes, it is.  We did see hawks circling, but since the cameras were set up for the eclipse, we couldn’t photograph any birds.  I did try Merlin at one point, but the breeze and local conversation drown out any chance of hearing birds.  There, I’ve mentioned birds.  Back to the eclipse story.

When everything was set up, a few other eclipse watchers stopped by to say Hi and ask if they could look through the telescope at the sun.  Of course, they can.  Most were amazed at how clearly you can see the edge of the moon covering the sun.  Not one asked why they couldn’t see the flames on the sun – long story for another time.  We met some very nice folks from Upper Michigan with a Questar telescope.  They weren’t quite from the UP but very close to it they said.  There was a family from Westmont, a suburb of Chicago.  Another family from a tiny town north of Chicago, Long Grove.  And yet another family from about 30 miles up the road in Belleville, IL.  The organizers from Chester stopped to chat with us and said there was a family that flew in for the event.  After the eclipse, they were driving straight to the St. Louis airport so they could fly home.  Another family drove here from . . . are you ready for this . . .  Utah!  That’s right!  They drove all the way to Chester, IL for the eclipse.

I’m going to leave out most of the jargon but have included an appendix if you are really interested. 

First contact is where the moon takes the first nibbles out of the sun signaling the beginning of the partial eclipse. (lower right in the photo)

From this point forward, the eclipse progresses very quickly even though it’s almost an hour and a quarter from the first nibble to totality, and then reverse on the other end.  At first there’s just a nibble at the edge of the sun.  Having seen a total eclipse before, I was looking for some of the subtleties of light changing I had missed before.  Even at about 5-10% of the sun being covered, the light takes on a new quality.  Shadows are still crisp, but not as defined as before.  The sky is bright, but just a bit dimmer than before.  Hues are a tiny bit subdued. 

Before I knew it, the sun is 20-25% covered.  Yes, you still need to use solar or eclipse glasses and filters; don’t be silly by risking your eyes.

The sky is noticeably darker now.  I can still see colors, but they are muted ever so slightly, as if someone moved the Saturation slider in Lightroom a bit to the left.  Shadows have softer edges similar to a slightly cloudy day, but still well defined. 

I didn’t adjust any colors, brightness or contrast in this photo, it’s pretty much straight out of the camera phone. 

Within a few minutes, the sun is about 50% covered.  Sun spots are visible throughout the eclipse with the filters in place.  The smaller sunspots, or the ones not directly in the middle of the sun’s face, begin to show themselves when more of the sunlight is blocked by the moon.  It’s sort of like trying to see minute details with a very bright light showing from behind.  Dim the light a bit, and some of the details show themselves.

I know it’s only been about 20 minutes, but the show seems to happening even quicker because there’s less and less sun to cover.  Don’t be fooled — both the sun and moon are moving at the same rate they were before.  All of the people activity has more or less stopped and everyone is lookup up at the sun.  Jan and I are still taking photos as fast as our memory cards can absorb them.  Now and then we put on the eclipse glasses and take a look for ourselves.  I sneak a peek through the telescope every now and then, too.  The people in the space next to us come to see the differences through the telescope.

At this point you may be wondering how we focused on the sun.  Cameras use contrast in a scene, or very sharp edges, to provide a focus lock.  The ultimate is when the brightest thing in the solar system (aka. the sun) and something else blocks 100% of the light (aka. the moon) during an eclipse to provide the ultimate contrast scene.  The challenge is holding a camera still for the autofocus to grasp the edges.  I’ve tried in the past to get the perfect focus manually by using painter’s tape on the focus ring so it doesn’t move.  That works well for a couple of minutes.  Even with the solar filter, the camera warms up a bit because it’s, well, sitting directly in the sun.  Warmth causes slight expansion, which changes the focus.  Between photos, I try to keep the lenses and telescope covered to keep them from warming too much just by sitting in the sun.

Our new lenses (both are the Nikon 200-500mm) do an excellent job of micro-focusing all on their own.  And the vibration reduction (VR) works very well, eliminating nearly all of the human induced vibration from shaking arms and shoulders by the end of the day. (This is not meant to a promotion for Nikon, but if anyone from Nikon wishes to sponsor Wildlife Intrigued, leave a note and I’ll have our attorneys contact you, once they’ve stopped photocopying their butts.)  In comparison, my telescope has a 2032mm focal length with an 8” objective lens/mirror, and is all manual focus.  But it has the advantage that it will follow the sun (or moon or stars) all by itself.

Back to the eclipse.  It’s very easy to get distracted and miss some of the eclipse – there’s no pause button.  We are about three-fourths of the way through the initial partial eclipse.

Human activity on the ground seems to increase to a near frenzy when the sun is reduced to a very thin crescent.  The sky was getting very dark.  Everyone wants to be in the perfect place to see totality.  In reality, all they have to do is look up.  We started to hear a lot of ooh’s and ahh’s and applause, just like watching fireworks on the 4^th of July.

Now you see it . . .

Now you don’t. (solar filters and glasses can come off now) 

I was glancing to the west as the crescent disappeared, hoping to catch the moon’s shadow approaching.  Remember what it’s like to see a large dark storm cloud looming?  The approaching sky to the west was black, as if the sun quit shining.  If the shadow could have made a noise, it would have been “whump!” as it raced over us at about 1500 miles per hour.

Take a moment to enjoy the photo, I’ll wait. (humming the Jeopardy theme song to myself) The whole experience is surreal.  The sun is supposed to always be there; now it’s not.  Those with sharp eyes (Jan) can see the pink prominences on the sun’s surface sticking out from behind the edge of the moon.  The corona also makes itself very obvious.  Birds stop chirping, crickets start. 

It’s a very emotional experience the first, and actually the second time around. Now, the really fun stuff is in those precious few minutes of totality.  Hopefully by now, everyone has taken off their eclipse glasses (for total eclipse only, annular eclipse observers must leave them on please).  Several things begin to show up during totality.  At this point our cameras are running nearly non-stop through the end of totality.  The next few photos are taken without any type of filter because there’s no sun showing.

The sun’s atmosphere is called the corona.  No, there’s no lime or beach or celebrities involved.  It’s the bright stuff that looks like it is streaming away from the sun.  Now that the sun itself is blocked by the moon, the corona comes into its own.  (Side note:  I’m proud to announce that not a single person in our area tried to use the flash from their smartphone to photograph the eclipsed sun this time.  Not one.  However, in 2017, there were flash bulbs popping nearly continuously.)

There are also bright pinkish-red prominences sticking out from the surface of the sun.  When the sun is fully shining, no one can see these at all.  Now that the moon is covering the sun, the prominences stick out a bit like Medusa’s hair.  For a bit of perspective, each of these prominences is at least several times bigger than the earth I’m told.  Remember, the sun is 93,200,000 miles (or 150,300,000 kilometers) away in April, so to be able to see any details means those prominences are HUGE!

If you’ve never seen a total solar eclipse, I cannot do an adequate job of explaining it.  These photos are good representations of what we saw and experienced.  But nothing replaces the sudden engulfing dark during midday, the sudden chill in the air, and the sudden stillness.  You get the impression there’s now a “hole in the sky”, just like that Avengers movie where the bad guys come through the portal.  You know which one I’m talking about.

One of the bonuses from the sun/moon interaction is the Diamond Ring effect (one on each end of the total eclipse).  When the tiniest bit (a millionth of a millionth of sunlight) of the sun isn’t quite covered, or just begins to peak out from behind the moon, the Diamond Ring shows itself. 

The diamond signals the end of the total eclipse.  Eclipse glasses back on please.  And just as quickly as the moon’s shadow engulfed the crowd, it passed by and raced towards the east.

During eclipses (partial or full), very still atmospheric conditions can show the mountains on the edge of the moon’s surface against the light from the sun.  If you look very carefully along the moon’s edge, you can see tiny ripples.  At first, I thought these were refraction artifacts, you know like a mirage, but they were the same in a series of photos; a mirage doesn’t do that.

Keep in mind that Jan has been holding an 8.5 lb. camera, nearly vertical, to take photos of the sun and moon . . . all . . . day . . . long. I cheated a bit and put my camera and lens piggyback on my Celestron C8 telescope (Halley’s comet vintage), mainly for the tracking ability it offers. 

Really, it was so I could then run that camera plus another mounted on a tripod nearby with tethered remotes.  The remotes let me take longer exposure photos without jiggling the camera to press the shutter release button, since the breeze was doing enough of that for me.  I also wanted to try exposure bracketing to see how much of the sun’s corona I could tease out.  I had it set to seven steps, my desired exposure plus six others of varying shutter speed.  I chose RAW format (Brian, you’re welcome) because I thought I could manage the extreme contrast in the photos a bit better.  Plus, they might be more consistent; sometimes with extreme bright or dark subjects JPEG introduces artifacts I didn’t want to have to “fix” in photos of our nearest star.  Yes, the sun is a star.  I’ll let that sink in for a moment or two.  The jury is still out on using RAW for eclipse photos.  It’s a must for deep sky photos, and when I have some success at that, I’ll write another story.

From this point, the eclipse is a reverse of the events leading up to totality.  Before the eclipse started, and after it ends, this is what the sun looked like that day. (same photo from the beginning)

The first total eclipse I saw I was too busy taking photos to really enjoy the 2 minute 40 seconds of totality.  I did that experience exactly backwards.  A video I watched online to learn about photography settings during an eclipse (I honestly forget which one) said it’s best to watch your first eclipse, and photograph the second one; otherwise, you’ll completely miss it and it only lasts a precious couple of minutes.  While time seems to stand still before totality; time speeds up exponentially during totality so it passes literally in the blink of an eye.  This was Jan’s first total eclipse; my second one.  I’ve seen many partials and one annular eclipse over the years.  This time I had the cameras set up ahead of time, so I could use the remote releases with each hand and just stare at the eclipse itself.  With the exception of taking a few smartphone photos, I watched nearly the entire 3 minute 25 second eclipse with the unaided eye.  Yes, I still had my regular glasses on, but no camera, no telescope, no eclipse glasses and no binoculars got in between me and one of the rarest things you will ever see in the sky.  Actually, total solar eclipses happen about every 18 months somewhere on earth, usually over water.  I’m told they also tend to cross prior eclipse paths about every seven years, again usually over water.

Now that I’ve rambled for a few paragraphs, even the partial eclipse is nearly over, I started packing up camp while Jan was catching a few last photos of the eclipse.  Funny how repacking three cameras and a telescope takes longer than setting it all up.  Usually, it’s the other way around.  As I was putting the last of it in the car, I tried Google Maps and lo and behold!  I had a reply with my route home.  It showed a 7-minute slowdown in the next little town (the one with the single flashing bulb at the intersection of two busy highways.)  Seven minutes is much better than the seventy minutes I encountered last trip.

Thank you for reading.  If you want to see more eclipse photos, please visit here.   If you want to see the eclipse in a short video, click the arrows to run quickly through the gallery to get a sense of what the eclipse was like.

Credits

Thanks again to Jan for proofreading and editing.  Thanks to Jan for many of the photos in this article. 

Backstory

In August 2017, my friend Paul and I went to see what was then called the “Great American Eclipse” near Chester, IL.  Paul and I, easily made it to Chester.  But on the way home, nearly everyone, and I mean EVERYONE in the middle of the country, was trying to drive on the same two-lane road we were on.  And to top it all off, there’s a small town that shall remain nameless, that has a single red flashing bulb at the intersection of the two busiest state highways in the country on that day.  How busy you ask?  It was so busy the 45-mile drive back to the interstate took over three hours.  The next 20 miles of interstate driving took nearly two hours.  We decided to stop for gas, just in case.  Why not!  No one was going anywhere anyway.  We found out a few minutes later that the tanks at the gas station ran dry about two cars behind us. Paul and I headed to the one and only fast-food place that was still open.  The others had all run out of food already.  I ended up with chicken tendons (no, that’s not a typo) because that’s all they had left.  A few minutes after Paul and I sat down to eat, a grumpy group came in and demanded food.  The underpaid and stressed-out fast-food workers pointed to us and said, “They have the last food we have”.

The original 3 ½ hour drive took 7+ hours on the return trip.  Oh, and there was zero cell service for the first few hours of our travel because, literally, a million extra people were trying to get Google Maps to come up on their phone.  We could send text messages, but with about a 10-minute delay.  The two  major carriers (one wasn’t even offered in our area at the time) had their complete cell networks crash for a couple hours.  Can you guess which hours those were?!

Appendix

Here’s the bit of jargon.  I’ve learned that there are four “contact” points, where the sun and moon touch or align. 

• First contact is where the Moon takes the first nibbles out of the Sun meaning the partial eclipse has begun.
• Second contact is when the leading edge of the moon touches the far side of the sun and the full eclipse begins.  Or there’s what’s called an annular eclipse, where the moon doesn’t quite completely cover the sun but instead leaves a very thin ring of the sun visible all the way around. 
• Third contact is when the trailing edge of the moon leaves the trailing edge of the sun.  This sounds a bit technical, like shouldn’t both edges of both touch at the same time?  There’s a lot of math in why that’s not always the case, sometimes the moon is just a smidgen bigger than the sun; astronomers like to count everything they can (it’s all about facts and data).  Or remember, it might be an annular eclipse, where the moon is a smidgen smaller than the sun in the sky.
• Fourth contact is when the last bit of the moon leaves the sun’s surface showing a full disc again. 

Sometimes, if I remember to set the camera up properly, which I didn’t this time, you can see planets very close to the sun.  Normal daily glare renders them invisible to the naked eye.  But when the sun is completely blocked, these tiny reflecting heavenly bodies shine on their own.  We were able to see them unaided, but the cameras didn’t capture them very well.  I had the cameras set up for the brightest thing in the sky, not the tiniest and faintest lights nearby.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen what are called Baily’s Beads (BB).  BB’s are when the sun’s thinnest rays peak around the edge of the moon during totality.  The rays (a thousandth of a thousandth of the suns light) actually shines through the valleys between the mountains on the edges of the moon.  The Beads can be spotted, by the fortunate observer, just after the Diamond Ring at the beginning of totality, and just prior to the Diamond Ring at the end of totality depending on where you are in the path of totality. 

By now you’ve probably noticed that the sunspots appear to move on the face of the sun between the photos.  That’s because the telescope tracks the sun as it appears in space, moving as the earth rotates to stop the apparent motion through the heavens.  Jan is standing on the earth which is moving through the heavens, so the sun appears to be rotating (and it is) in the photos.  I’ll have to refer to Wildlife Intrigued’s Astronomy department for a more detailed explanation.  I think it’s sort of cool because I get to look at the photos differently as I’m selecting and editing them for the story.

Camera setups and equipment list (no sponsorship received for any of the following)

Jan’s

• Nikon D300 camera
• Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR lens, mostly used 500mm
• Neewer HD ND100000 NW Series nano coating 95mm filter
• Partial eclipse settings (f/11, 1/1000-1250 second, ISO 400, RAW+JPEG Fine)
• Full eclipse settings (f/14, 1/1000 second, ISO 400, RAW+JPEG Fine)
• Hand-held

Brad’s

• Nikon D300
• Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR lens, mostly used 500mm
• Star Guys mylar 135mm solar filter
• Partial eclipse settings (f/10-11, 1/1000-1250 second, ISO 400, RAW+JPEG Fine)
• Full eclipse settings (f/8, 1/500-2000 second, ISO 400, RAW+JPEG Fine, 7-step bracketing)
• Manual/Automatic tethered release
• Mounted piggyback on the Celestron C-8

Celestron C-8

• 2032mm fixed focal length
• Celestron 26mm eyepiece (effective 78x magnification, the sun filled the field of view. A bit much for an eclipse, but it’s what I have.)
• 8” aperture/mirror
• f/10 all day long
• Thousand Oaks glass-silvered solar filter
• Tripod mounted with motorized clock drive to track the sun

Third camera

• Nikon D300
• Nikon 18-70 f/3.5-4.5 AF-S DX
• DHG ND-100000 77mm filter with 67-77 adapter ring
• Partial eclipse settings (f/9, 1/500-1250 second, ISO 400, RAW+JPEG Fine)
• Full eclipse settings (f/5, 1/400 second, ISO 500, RAW+JPEG Fine)
• Manual tethered release
• Fixed tripod mount I kept manually moving every few minutes to keep the eclipse in the frame