Well, Saturday was not only a beautiful day weather wise, but also the day of the total eclipse.
While the farm wasn't under the direct path of totality, being 45 miles West of Houston meant it was 45 miles closer to the path and gave us a partial "almost total" eclipse. Not sure when the next one is, so we figured best to enjoy this one now.
A few weeks ago, I bought these great eclipse viewing glasses. There was a list of certified glasses that met the proper safety standards so I made sure to get those. No need to risk eyesight!
Then, there is this great website we often use, www.timeanddate.com. We sometimes use it for sunset/sunrise times, moonrise/phases, etc but this year, they had eclipse times as well! You go to the map and can zoom down to your actual house location (or let your phone be your location) and it will give you exact times to the minute and even show what it will look like from your location as well.
This was cool, I was using the camera to take a picture through the glasses and before I did, it took a picture and the reflection of light in the camera lens showed the start of the eclipse!
We watched it through the glasses, way cool. Then I thought about holding them up to the camera to get a picture. It wasn't as easy as I thought but...
...I did capture this one. We didn't get the "Ring of Fire" this far west but you can see here it was exactly like the website showed it would be.
It got fairly dark but in a weird way.
The shadows were in unfamiliar places and the sky just had an odd appearance to it. The porch was also very dark for the middle of the day. Pretty neat. Also, we didn't think about it until later driving back into town, but it became very quiet...there were no birds chirping or the usual crickets and other insects you'd hear on a nice, clear Fall day.
Nice experience and one we hope happens again.
Save your glasses; (just don't forget you put them) cause a total eclipse will be in April of next year.
ReplyDeleteCool photos by the way. Thanks 4 sharing them
DeleteThanks for that, you know what's funny, we didn't even notice but on the side of the glasses, on one side was this date and the other side is the date next April!! Never noticed that, ha.
DeleteThanks, they were the best ones that came out.
DeleteI'd forgotten all about it as I was gardening outside. I probably stopped for some lunch about the time of it because I recall the wind picked up, it got cooler and a bit darker which I was thinking was the cloud cover. Today a friend mentioned all those things happening at the time of the eclipse and that explained what I'd missed at the time.
ReplyDeleteMy boss said something similar, he was at a kids football game and totally forgot about it and then it started getting weirdly dark and he was like "oh yeah, that's happening".
DeleteSuper photographs.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
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