Aug 21 2017 Eclipse Writeup (transcribed Nov 25)

This document will serve as a record to my future of the 2017 Great American Solar Eclipse.

The log was written shortly after the August 21st 2017 Solar Eclipse totality, as the sun was coming back into view. I had traveled along with my local astronomy club--the GTCC Jamestown Stellar Society--to Newberry, SC to see the totality. I was so excited I could hardly sleep the night before, but I had to wake up at 3:00 in the morning to make it to GTCC in time to join the expedition. We stopped after the sun rose at Bojangle's for breakfast, and after the long drive we arrived around 10:00 AM. We unpacked the telescopes and the special club T-shirts of my own design, and we got to work.

Before and during the partial eclipse we set up telescopes and solar viewers for the public to use during the partial phases leading up to the eclipse. I was interviewed by the News and Record, I was able to teach the public about our instruments and the eclipse itself, and I took a stroll through the town of Newberry to see everything that was set up for the festival. I had traveled down a few blocks to the house which some weathermen from the National Weather Service were set up (this was in fact at the same house that was used by the NWS 117 years earlier for the 1900 eclipse) to set up a Hydrogen Alpha telescope for them to use, and played with some puppies that the owners of the house had. When back at the Library one of the motorized telescopes began overheating and stopped working. By the time totality approached I was getting cold, jittery, and panicked--this was it, the sliver of the sun was getting slimmer and slimmer.

We were trying to point the telescopes at the sun and I had bumped into the telescope a few times. By this point each of the members of the AST-251 class (Myself, Zach, and Chris) were manning our own telescopes (which we would remove the solar filter from during totality), and the public was no longer allowed to look through. We had asked Annie Crismon, a friend and fellow club member, to count the seconds of totality, but a reporter from the Greensboro News and Record was interviewing her throughout totality. We needed her accurate numbers, alas we did not quite get them. Thankfully no one was looking through the unprotected telescope when totality ended. During the totality, despite explicit instructions not to do so, I had excalimed "I have to draw!" and rushed to find my log book to make a sketch of the eclipse. I then looked around and took in totality, before sitting down in a chair for a while and eventually starting to write in my log.

After the partial eclipse ended, we packed up the telescopes, took a group photo with Lanie Pope, a reporter from WXII News 12, and we packed up. Some of the expedition had already left separately, and then it was once again just me, Chris, and teachers Steve Desch and Tom English. The van ride home may have involved some singing along with Chris--neither teacher enjoyed it. We stopped at Zaxby's fast food on the way back home, and I arrived home at 11:00 PM. It was a long day. It was probably the best in my life at the time of writing this--three months later.

Back home in Greensboro, my family and friends were sad to report that the solar eclipse (while partial anyway) was mostly clouded and rained out. When asked about how totality compared to partial eclipse, I responded that seeing the moon start to go in front of the sun was cool in a nerdy kind of way. But it slowly progressed into a more and more supernatural feeling as the sun got smaller and smaller, until it was a completely alien and otherworldly experience during totality. The partial eclipse was nothing on totality.

The above was written Nov 25, and is to provide some context for the following log transcription of what I wrote on the day, my first recording in my Observational Astronomy Log Book. Some of the details above may be incorrect or out of order, as I didn't record them well at the time. Three months on, I already struggle to remember what the sensations and experiences that day truly felt like, which is why I've taken this time--when I really should be working on my final assignments for college, to record the rest of what I can remember aside from the log.

Here's some links that I was featured or shown in:

My interview with the News and Record (In the start, Tom English is talking):
https://www.facebook.com/newsandrecord/videos/10155837558518394/?hc_ref=ARTgEtDf0E5wG0vCa21Z7ENPzmCKf2myBjWBi9maTuqamWbqTSMaECBUHbbG7UZu1GE&pnref=story

The News and Record writeup of the event: http://www.greensboro.com/news/local_news/total-eclipse-the-fastest-two-minutes/article_b3bb7519-86f9-5ece-b1dc-38f2817e4c77.html (You can see me in the background and hear my ~~elated~~ autistic screeches in the video of totality--where Annie is being interviewed--"GTCC Students Study the Eclipse in Newberry, SC.") Also in this link is my interview.

My T-shirt design (Which by error ended up being printed white on a black shirt) https://i.imgur.com/gGakg6r.png

https://i.imgur.com/Ar5RK6r.jpg A picture of me setting up a Celestron motorized telescope, taken by Annie.

https://i.imgur.com/PK1S9K3.jpg Annotated version.

Finally, here's the log entry.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

["I have to draw!"](https://i.imgur.com/O0wrMNR.jpg)
(the text says "prominence")

I became speechless, the sky was orange all around. The visible corona was the single most incredible thing I had ever seen. Prominences were almost visible to the naked eye, a few (2-3) visible through telescope. Very few spiky formations were visible.
The sky was slightly violet right next to the sun. Nothing will ever look as beautiful again. I am filled, in the moments during and after totality, with a powerful and totally unfamiliar emotion. Stress created by needing to use telescopes before the eclipse caused me to jitter and panic, so the eclipse felt less like ~2 min and more like ~30 seconds.

I regret spending so much time in the telescope and not looking at the corona --the beautiful ghostly whispy ring-- or around at the world.

It was so dark, cool, and everyone was talking and wooing. I would sell my soul for a chance to see another one, totally alone, with nothing but the eye and filter glasses. The last second of totality was the most dramatic. The corona immediately became an incredibly bright star, with the immediate requirement to look away from the sun, the Corona lost in an instant.

As the sun came back out and the sky became brighter, I was incapacitated by this past event. I took several moments for me to calm down enough to speak and write.

Leading up to the eclipse, the sun's dimming led to a peculiar effect. The dimming of the yellow-white sun and the relative consistence of the blue sky caused everything to become desaturated and slightly bluish. Just before totality we did observe shadow bands, which were of minimal impression. Our shadows became sharp, with a strange crescent-shaped ghost shape. Pinhole projection shows crescents onto the ground from hats, trees, thumbtack holes, and colanders.

Shortly after the eclipse, I cried and I am not ashamed about it at all.

[written by Tom English later in red ink: "nice writeup"]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I definitely hope to be able to travel to the 2024 eclipse. This isn't the kind of experience you can really only have once. You have to see it again.

EDIT: March/27/2017.
Just remembered another thing that happened early in the morning. On the way to GTCC early in the morning to meet up with the expedition, at like 4:00 AM, leaving our neighborhood, a woman came up to the car I was riding in (my mother was driving me). She had been abandoned in Jamestown by her boyfriend when her boyfriend negatively reacted to her not wanting to have sex with him. She lived at the far side of High Point, rather far away. After my mother dropped me off at GTCC, my mother took the lady home.