Created: 08/26/17
More photos of the eclipse can be found on my brothers Google Photo Page. Marc used a Meade telescope to capture some great images of the event.
Eclipse Information For Our Viewing Site
Marc setting up his telescope. The camera in the third picture was used to create this time elapse movie.
Christie and Daisy waiting for the event to start...
Here are a sequence of photos before and after totality.
9:31am , 9:56am and also 9:56am
10:13am, 10:14am and 10:15am
10:16:04am and 10:16:53am - Just a few seconds before totality
10:17:48am and 10:18:12am - Totality
Some more pictures around totality
10:19:41am, 10:23am and 10:25am
10:26am - The End!
Anne, my wife, captured this photo of totality using our Panasonic Lumix digital camera. The corona, only visible during at total eclipse, can clearly be seen in the image.
Here are some GoogleEarth images of our viewing site at the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge. We stayed at the Ankeny Overlook about 915 feet (279m) south of the center path of totality. This is the blue line in the pictures.
The only experiment I did during the eclipse was to measure the temperature change. As you can see from the plot below the temperature dropped around 15oF.
Our solar power system recorded the partial eclipse very nicely. Redwood City had a 74.5% coverage of the sun.
Some pictures on the way up to Eugene Oregon. This is around the Mount Shasta area.
We went to Oregon to view the August 21, 2017 total eclipse of the sun. This was my first time in Oregon and driving thru N. California. My wife and I went with my brother Marc, his wife Christie and their daughter Daisy. Since Marc had a lot of equipment and three people in the car we decided to take two vehicles. We left on Thursday the 17th, stayed the night in Ashland OR and continued to Eugene the next day. Marc has been planning this for over a year and thought ahead and booked us an Airbnb house a few month ago. On Saturday Marc and I drove up to the site he picked to view the eclipse. The site was in the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge park. The park has a overlook that was perfect for viewing the event and setting up Marc's telescope. The site was only 915 feet (279m) away from the center of the totality path. The problem was there was only 16 parking slots available at the lookout. People could not stay overnight and the park was closed until 6:00am the day of the eclipse. The website for the park said it was basically first come first serve as far as getting into the overlook parking lot.
It was decided that the only way to get into the park was to leave real early the night before the event. The park was about 50 miles north of Eugene and 9 miles south of Salem OR. We left around midnight in Marc SUV and got to the park around 1:00am. The drive there was fine, only light traffic. There was already a few cars parked at the entrance gate. Since the gate opened at 6:00am we had 5 hours to kill and another 3 hours after that before the beginning of the eclipse. I did not get any sleep that night but others were able to get some sleep in before 6:00am.
Around 6:00am all hell broke out. By this time lots of cars have shown up and had parked near the gate. The people who showed up early were upset that the people who came later would be allowed to enter the park before the people like us who came early. The park rangers handled the situation pretty well. Since we already had a parking space near the entrance to the park and the overlook was not that far away we decided to keep the SUV where it was and carry in our stuff to the site. If nothing else it gave use something to do until 9:00am.
Marc setup his telescope while we had breakfast. By the time the eclipse started there where maybe a few hundred people there. Lots of telescopes and other apparatuses to view the event. At 9:05am the eclipse began. It took another hour and 12 minutes before totality. The weather at the time of the eclipse was very good. There was some haze on the horizon but overhead it was clear. The haze was probably from all of the wildfires Oregon is having. While the beginning of the eclipse moves rather slowly things get exciting the last few minutes before totality. A split second after totality the corona pops out around the dark disk. Lots of oohs and ahhs from the crowd. Totality lasted for 2 minutes. One thing that surprised me was it did not get as dark as I expected it would get. You could see some of the brighter stars overhead there was some light on the horizon. You can see it in this picture. This is probably from the haze.
Needless to say the two minutes of totality goes very fast. The next event is the Diamond ring effect. This happens at the time the moon just moves away from blocking the sun. It's very spectacular and only lasts for a few seconds. Lots of oohs and ahhs again from the crowd. At this point the main event is over. A lot of people left once totality passed and it got a little lighter. Marc wanted to capture the whole eclipse so we stayed until the end at 11:37am.
The drive back to Eugene took over 2 hours due to all of the traffic. The freeway I5 and all of the side roads were all bumper to bumper. We left for home the next day. Traffic on I5 was still heavy but not to bad. We once again stayed overnight in Ashland. The smoke from all of the wildfires was very bad. Some people in town had masks on and they had to cancel a outdoor Shakespeare play so the Actors didn't have to breath the stuff. We left Ashland and got home about 6 hours later.
We would like to thank Marc, Christie and Daisy for a great time.
-Larry
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