I've waited for this one for decades. I remember reading about it as kid. It would happen here. But would I be "here" when it happened? Would I even be alive? It turns out I've always lived in the Dayton area and I was raring to go when the time came.
03:08:30 PM - Seconds until totality
Here's how the sun slowly disappeared ...
01:57:50 PM - Just after first contact
02:15:42 PM
02:31:54 PM
02:32:44 PM
02:48:18 PM
02:59:34 PM
Closer look as totality arrives
That's a solar prominence at the bottom and I've seen it in multiple images taken by other people at the same time. Just a bit of the sun still shines above the top left edge of the moon. And the Diamond Ring encircles the moon.
A wider view of totality
Look to the lower right of the sun, about 4-o-clock. That's Venus right in the middle of the wispy cloud.
Other wider views. Totality is an otherworldly sensation. The air cools. The birds begin to roost. Everything seems to quiet and still. The stars come out.
Photo Credit: Chris Boyer
We set up a picnic table in the backyard so we'd have a place to sit for the few hours to monitor the progress of the eclipse. Far left, Frank Manthey from Whitewater, Wisconsin. Right Chris Boyer.
Frank Manthey on left. He's using a 35mm camera with film and experimenting with two dark glass filters.
Th two filters (above) showing how they performed earlier with my cell phone.
What's the basket all about? It's to hold my eclipse glasses when I'm not using the camera (which has a homemade solar filter on it). I was worried a wind might come up and scatter everything (it didn't).
Tom and Parker sat on the back porch as the countdown progressed.
Me (l-r), Frank Manthey, Tom (holding Parker) and Chris Boyer
Three shots of my camera display as I'm working to get the eclipse pictures. I shared these as I took them with Jim Saylor who was in Florida watching a partial eclipse.
Here's two graphs from my Tempest weather station. The first (above) shows the temperature dropping from 73° to 68°.
This this is a graph of the UV radiation falling precipitously. Of course it went from sunlight with high scattered clouds to almost nighttime.
Watch our back porch security cam respond to the lowering light levels during the eclipse by clicking here.
And here's our south-facing security cam. Fast forward as needed. Click here.
Credit: USA Today
