So how was your experience viewing the eclipse? Especially curious what folks who saw totality thought of it

It was too cloudy here to see it well,
but it did get dark and cold for a while.

Got cucked by clouds.

I got to see about 40 miles outside of Knoxville, it was very surreal.
It was 95 degrees out, but about 20 mins before totality it started cool down, and while the sunlight started to get dimmer, it wasn't dim like things are in the early morning, but rather everything looked desaturated and the shadows were much sharper. You could hear the cicadas much more and just before totality the only part of the sun left was this one point of light. Everything went dark except for some twilight circulating the horizon, the corona in the sky and few stars as well.Then after totality the reverse happened. The only bad thing about this was drivingthrough some god awful traffic on the way back, what was ideally a 7 hour trip became 15 hours because of all the construction

ive never been more depressed in my life.

>live in chicago, 5 hour drive to totality downstate
>sister wants to go also, we dont hang out much so this should be a memorable time
>no lodging left so we park and intend to sleep at a walmart; they usually dont care
>walmart kicks us out for fear of full parking lot
>try kroger
>meet some cool folks from texas and hang out, but kroger kicks us out too
>end up sleeping in car at a super 8
>wake up drive into downtown Carbondale
>hot as fuck but we walk around talking to people and buying dumb shit
>clear skies
>assemble in big party area when 1st phase begins
>fuck yeah so cool
>20 minutes to totality
>giant ass cloud starts lumbering towards sun
>envelops it 5 minutes before totality
>totality behind asshole cloud
>cloud moves away 3 minutes after totality
>everyone is sad
>the return trip takes 10 hours in standstill traffic up I57

literally everyone else who was in the path said it was the most awesome thing they had ever seen. I want to die.

a lot of what user said here but i'll tell my story

Some friends and I, (inb4 "no one has friends on Veeky Forums") went to a small town in western N.C. where they were having a block party. NASA was there, CBS was there, they had rides and stuff for kids; it was quaint as fuck and gave everyone something to do beforehand. as for the eclipse itself...

i had timers set for when the partial eclipse started and 10 minutes before totality. as soon the partial eclipse started, and i'm talking the MINUTE it started, things got oddly quiet. we couldn't hear any animals and the wind wasn't blowing; only humans were making noise.

about 20 minutes before totality started, the cool shit started happening. it got even quieter and there was a strange pressure in the air; kind of like you were standing in a vacuum. the temperature dropped a good 7 degrees and the humidity disappeared. trees starting making shadows of the eclipse (just google "eclipse tree shadows"). also, the sky turned a dark blue and shadows and the clouds looked sharper in resolution. it was pretty cool.

once totality started, it went from "20 minutes until sunset " dark to "30 minutes before sunrise" dark in a matter of seconds. the eclipse itself was absolutely incredible. you can look at thousands of pictures and it wont do it justice. seeing a ring of fire in the sky is something you can't prepare for. you know WHAT is happening but your subconscious can't explain to your brain what you're looking at because you've never seen a glowing circle where the sun is supposed to be. personally, we felt a rush of adrenaline because we had been waiting all day for it and the payoff was more than we could've imagined even though it only lasted 2.5 minutes. during totality, we also saw a purple glow on the horizon, stars/planets CLEARLY visible in the sky, and clouds just vanished.

the best part was the second totality ended. there was a thin layer of clouds in front of the eclipse but nothing... (1/2)

>The only bad thing about this was drivingthrough some god awful traffic on the way back, what was ideally a 7 hour trip became 15 hours because of all the construction
Same. I nodded off a few times on the drive back and those rumble strips saved my ass.

I got paid to see the eclipse because I work there. Had a really sparse population in my area and didn't have to deal with much.

It was nice. Where did you hike up at?

Wonderful. My stupid camera phone can't do justice to totality but you can see the sunset on the bottom with the eclipse on top, it simply burned out the photo receptors in the camera and made it appear like a bright light.

(continued)
...that completely blocked the view. when the diamond ring formed when totality ended, the sunlight shined through a crater onto the clouds and a fucking explosion of light burst onto the layer of clouds. it was almost like the sun shown through a shutter lens onto the the planet. it was amazing.

i know Veeky Forums generally makes fun of people getting emotional but we had a fucking amazing experience despite the traffic nightmare afterwards. 15/10 see it before you die. that said...

i'm really fucking sorry that happened but there's another one in 2024. i hope you get to get to see it.

Saw totality in SC for 2:19. Pretty fucking amazing. It was getting cloudier and cloudier all morning, then at about 2PM the clouds all just evaporated over about 10 minutes. Weirdest thing I ever saw. But it was great for us.

Got to see shadow bands, even.
Huge success.

>I want to die

You will, eventually. If you put it off past 2024, or head down to South America in two years, and then die after that, you can try again.

Was ok. I wasnt in totality but it was cool seeing everything outside get darker. Seemed like dusk for a few minutes.

I tried looking at it with a pair of variable density goggles from WW2. Kinda sucked. The goggles helped enough that it didn't hurt my eyes, but not enough to let me see anything.

Blacktail Butte near Gros Ventre

Next time, try the world's easiest ad cheapest way to image a partial eclipse.

Also, not weird effect along shadow edges.

Forgt pic

I did that trick too but with a cardboard box I poked a pinhole in.

i guess another thing i should add since it was rural Tennessee, the cows started mooing on a farm not to far from where i was after totality

Watched it in Andrews, NC.

Before the eclipse happened, I thought media folks saying that totality is 1000% more exciting than a partial was just hype, but they were right. Nothing about a partial comes close to seeing the last slivers of sun swallowed by the moon's shadow, then immediately taking off your glasses to see the coronal ring with your naked eyes. To borrow some other guy's metaphor, saying you watched a partial eclipse is like saying you went to a concert when you were only outside the venue listening to the muffled bass.

Really nice spot. I was near Signal Mountain

How busy was it? I avoided the main park as I expected it to be swamped.

I had 3 cars in my parking lot. Signal Mountain and Colter Bay were swamped. Jenny Lake had less visitors than it does on normal days.

Gros Ventre Rd and Mormon Row was where most of the action was

A lot of the smaller turnouts were not crowded at all

I was in totality path in North Carolina. Very eerie. I felt "off." Probably my circadian rhythm reacting to the dimming at ~2pm. Crickets started chirping. And it felt weird being able to stare toward the Sun during the event, considering it was still bright as fuck at every point leading up to it.

As I was watching Totality, it was like I was actually watching a ghost, or there were ghosts around. I got really lucky and actually saw a few bailey diamonds with my naked eye in the milliseconds as Totality was ending. They really were like the gemstone! The return trip was traffic Hell for most, Over a 9 hour period we averaged maximum speed of 10mph. Think about that. I didn't mind because it gave a ton of time for my g/f to perform oral sex on me and also I could take my time fingering her in multiple orifices for explosive orgasms.

For all the people that missed it, rest assured, you'll be able to see the next one perfectly in VR and you won't know the difference!

2024 HERE WE COME.

The shadow thing was pretty cool

Also, did you guys notice when taking a pic of the sun, little crescent focal glares came up?

Nebraska. It was pretty solid. Clowdy, but you could see the darkness set on. 9/10 would walk outside again for it.

went there with my family one time
we saw the iss a shooting star and the milky way

maybe camera obscura?

I'm in South America, so it was just a 20% and I couldn't even see the difference.

I hope I can save enough to travel to Argentina or Chile in 2019 or 2020, because the next total eclipse here is in 2067.

Completely worth the 7 hour drive and hundreds spent. I was about about a few hundred feet from the centerline in eastern Oregon.
It's a strange feeling to see objects that are so commonplace interacting in this way. I got plenty of photos (pic related) but nothing can compare seeing it with your own eyes. Those 2+ minutes went too quick yet lasted forever. 8/8 m8, would do again.

I was near 98% totality but I was fucking disappointed when the moon didn't block the sun completely and it didn't look dark past what you'd see at 8:00 PM EST. I have a few pics.

you didn't move into a place with 100% totality

given you were that close staying put seems odd

I was only 10-15 miles away from 100% totality.

When it comes to partial eclipses (which I've seen a couple of before this) I agree with you. But for future reference, totality is worth traveling for.

shit man, that last 2% really matters

FWIW lots of the country east of the rockies got cockblocked by clouds.

Sorry to hear that. I avoided Carbondale because I knew it would be swamped. So my gf and I went to Marion, the next town over. We had clear skies the whole way through and it is something I will never forget. I hope the seed I pur in her belly felt it too. But yeah the drive back was enough to drive a man insane.

I legit thought it didn't really matter, now I regret it.

I was at totality in South Carolina, and luckily there was no cloud overhead when it reached totality for that sweet 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

At about 95% eclipsed, the colors around you got mute. Thats the best way I can describe it. Even with the majority of the sun blocked out, it was still rather sunny.

When the total eclipse occurred, all you could hear was the loudness of the cicadas chirping thinking it was night time. You could also hear people whistling and cheering--at least I think so, I was more so focused on looking at the eclipse and I am sure everyone else was too.

One awesome thing about totality that you don't realize is how dark the moon looks in the middle of it all. It was pitch black--couldn't see anything through it and it looked kind of like a marble, maybe.

I could see a planet to the far left of the eclipse when it happened, not sure which one.

The corona is hard to describe. It was wispy and all around, like a liquid and buttery and light. The pictures you see when you google a total eclipse don't do it justice because it gets rid of so much of the wispiness.

Everyone pretty much left 10 minutes after totality. Driving home was a nightmare--traffic was at a standstill on I-95. I went to Mcdonalds to grab a wakeup meal at like 11 PM and some guy quipped "Every person over the age of 50 who has a driver's license is on I-95 right now". At some points it took an hour to drive a mile and a half.

Feel free to ask me anything else

> the colors around you got mute
the best way i can describe it was that the colors we desaturated

>Driving home was a nightmare
It really was the worst traffic i've seen.
Getting out of Tennessee was awful, at one point we traveled 40 miles in 3 hours, and it still took another 3 hours to get into Virginia
after getting to Knoxville.I thought that was the end and i would be home at 3am, but sadly the candyass engineers decided to have roadwork around the time of big event half the country wanted to see. So driving on I-81 was tourture, even with some detours

Lol that is a shame. I drove up on Sunday, stayed at a hotel and saw it Monday. The better way to do it would be to drive up on Monday, stay overnight, and then drive back on Tuesday. I'm sorry there was construction on your drive back...I-95 was super slow until you crossed into Georgia and got 3 lanes, then it was fast again, but with a lot of cars on the road!

It was something that once you saw it you couldn't take your eyes off of it. Like a soft wispy angelic glow in the sky. The moment the sunlight returned was the jaw dropping part.

Ah, well I guess it was best to be over prepared. I think there was an expectation of more traffic on Gros Ventre and they were expecting to lock down the camp to prevent folks sneaking in but the road was clear aside from the main center point of the eclipse and right by the camp entrance.

I noticed that in a video I recorded of the eclipse. Just before and after the crescent showed up and it matched timing wise with the actual sun.

Yea that light was something.

>I could see a planet to the far left of the eclipse when it happened, not sure which one.
Facing South? About 40 degrees left of the eclipse? Might have been Jupiter. I was looking for any planets I could find. Even closed one eye 5 minutes before totality to help it adjust to the dark. Jupiter was low behind some rooftops from where I watched, but I easily found Venus about 30 degrees right, and I saw what I thought might be Mercury just left of the eclipse but in hindsight was probably Regalus. I was somewhat disappointed not to see Mars.

earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/august-21-2017-solar-eclipse-4-planets-bright-stars

>colors
Yeah, it was eerie. In the last minutes before totality, light levels seemed much brighter than moonlight, but still far dimmer than broad daylight and perhaps akin to a heavy overcast. But the light was specular, casting defined shadows (even more defined than usual), rather than scattered and diffuse as with a cloudy day. I guess the closest way I can describe it is like the light from a shitty white keychain light - white, very sharp and just barely bright enough to distinguish colors - but EVERYWHERE.

It rained here, so it was just slightly darker than it was the hour beforehand.

I was sad.

Watched it on Borah with 100 or so other people who had the same idea. Camped out at the trailhead the night before, at 7200' in the desert, on one of the darkest and clearest nights I've experienced, which was a nice bonus. The first hour or so of the eclipse wasn't much different than normal, just a sliver of the sun taken out at first and gradually getting more covered. Most people occasionally looked at the sun through glasses to see the progress but nothing that could be seen with the naked eye. Closer to totality the light started looking flatter and dimmer, almost like twilight but the shadows didn't lengthen or soften, so everything had a very surreal look. The temperature dropped, everyone put on coats and hats. A minute or so before totality the horizon to the west darkened, it got darker and darker to the west, then totality hit. There was a 360° sunset, red everywhere on the horizon. It was a twilight level of darkness, could see a few brighter stars and planets. The moon looked pitch black during totality, surrounded by the corona which looked pure white it was an incredible contrast. It looked a lot bigger than I expected it to, the size of a full moon (obviously, in retrospect), pictures really don't do it justice. Watched the shadow lift and head east over the mountains as totality ended and a couple minutes later things were back to normal. 10/10 would drive 4 hours each way again.

Saw it in central Wyoming.

Absolutely worth it. Absolutely worth the 12 hours of hell of Interstate25 standstill. Absolutely already looking into joining a tour group for every one I can see.
If you missed it, you fucked up hard, bro. Don't fuck up in 2024.

Where I am we only got 70% totality, I looked at it for a few seconds with improvised eye protection and then spent the next day worrying that I might go blind. All in all it was neat.

the difference between looking at 99% eclipse with your glasses vs experience totality is pretty much the difference between masturbating to your crush's facebook profile vs taking her anal virginity

I had class so I missed the whole thing. Origanal plan was to roadtrip north to Oregon for totality with some friends but I had a project due in one math class and a test in another so I ended up not going.

To add a description:
There wasn't a cloud in the sky. I was very close to the center line, so there were thousands of people. We stopped in a tiny town and parked on the open grass. It was a festival. Breakfast tacos, coffee, tshirts, vendor shit, some guy hooked me into a conversation about his religious beliefs and how this is all in the bible, children running around playing pick-up sports games, shitload of amateur telescopes and expensive cameras. One of the tshirts was just a picture of the eclipse with the time "2m28s" in the center which I thought was a little weirdly specific. As soon as the first nibble was taken out, a roaring cheer went through the crowd. The next 40 minutes or so everyone was hyped as all fuck. You could see the sky slowly darken from the oncoming path of the shadow. The temperature dropped slowly, and a bitterly cold wind coming from the dark picked up. Within the last few minutes, the crowd picked up like it was the superbowl. I only saw such a tiny sliver of the sun at this point, so I tried looking with my own eyes to see that diamond ring. Fuck! I immediately had a blind spot in the center of my eye from like 1-2% sunlight. I started blinking and panicking. It dissipated a few seconds before the Sun disappeared. You knew exactly when. Everyone went crazy with cheers, but I completely tuned it out. I looked around and the entire horizon was red. I looked up and saw one of the planets (I think Jupiter). I glanced towards the Sun, and my vision locked onto the fucking Sun and something primitive in my mind just fucking melted. Every single other person I've spoken with or read has been at a loss for the correct set of words to fully describe it, and I am another one of them. It was the most beautiful sight of nature I have ever seen. It was the most angelic white I've ever seen. The moon was a perfect black circle with white, glowing hair billowing out 3x the volume.

Every follicle on my body was in goosebumps. Something deep and primitive in my brain was screaming because my eyes just locked onto the fucking Sun. After what felt like just mere seconds, the light went from a glow equivalent to a very full moon, to a piercing bright light that forced you to immediately look away. It was already over. Within minutes, you could feel the temperature shift. Sitting in the same spot and watching the eclipse diminish, you knew exactly how immensely powerful the Sun is. You could feel how even just marginal percentage differences raises the temperature within minutes.

If you didn't know it was coming, you absolutely would have felt like you just saw fucking God for a few seconds and he didn't blind you instantly like he would have for every other second of your life.

saw the path of totality since I go to school in Salem. Shit was better than sex.

When I got to my car, I sat there chuckling at the people attempting to "beat" the traffic. I googled when the next one was because it was so fucking worth it.

Next one? 2019. With just the end of it over South America during their cloudy season. 2020? South America again. 2021? Fucking Antarctica. 2023? Only visible if you are rich as fuck to get to tiny islands above Australia and the max is 60 seconds. 2024? The next Great North American eclipse crossing Mexico and all of the Eastern USA.

Seven fucking years until I can see it again and for 4 minutes. I understood the 2m28s tshirt at that moment.

Then I sat in traffic and watched the sunset while still trying to leave Wyoming 9 hours later

>tfw it stormed
>tfw I missed it
2024 though amirite?

kill me

>With just the end of it over South America during their cloudy season.
Doesn't that mean it will be exceptionally short from there? Or will it be almost normal, just low on the horizon? 2020 or 2024 seem like the hot ticket unless you're willing to charter a cruise ship.

The duration is dependent on the moon rather than it being beginning/end. It looks like several of the eclipses end because it the shadow hits sunset. The 2019 might be fucking awesome to see on the Pacific ocean coast since the moon/sun look bigger closer to the horizon. The twilight effect would be more pronounced as well, I bet. But everything I read up on it said there's likely to be clouds everywhere that time of year.

I found this one helpful:

skyandtelescope.com/observing/totality-whens-next-eclipse/

>One awesome thing about totality that you don't realize is how dark the moon looks in the middle of it all.
Yeah. Apparently there's enough Earthshine there to show details in a long exposure photo, though.

> wow moon aligns perfectly with the sun. woopdidoo

>wow, she poops from there. woopdidoo

twitter.com/JMKTV/status/899734847878565888

Watched it in a walmart parking lot in sweetwater, tennesee. The gradual buildup to the totality is both eerie and otherwordly. The sky gets darker and it gets colder, but there is no wind. The locusts in the forest got really loud deer came out on the sides of the roads, watching the nearly 500 people in the parking lot. And as soon as the moon passes the line of totality, it makes it appear as if the entire sky erupts into sun rises in every direction. 2 minutes and 37 seconds of absolute awe. When the moon finally crosses the other side, there is a brilliant flash of light, and it's all over. One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, 10/10 would witness again

I was genuinely scared I was gonna lose an eye from this. Trekked 1100 miles from California to Idaho to get a picture of it with a telescope. The eclipse started to become exciting once the temperature dropped, birds started flipping out, and the lights on structures started to turn on. I had a jerry rigged solar filter on my telescope, which let me get the scope aligned before totality. The brightness was the scary part, i had no idea hiw bright the corona was. If I wasn't fast enough to remove the solar filter, or too slow to put it back on, I'd lose an eye or my camera.

It was absolutely stunning. The brightness, color, and clarity was nothing like any of the pictures you'll find online. The corona was extremely detailed, while the moon was pitch black. I was only able to take one picture that turned out not too blurry.

I really liked the last second green flare I got on this. I was using one of those Canon DO lenses so it tends to impart a green glare when you have situations like this.

~95%. it was spooky, the light level was like it was dusk, but the light wasn't diffuse or angled. temperature felt like it dropped by five to ten F.

no cloud coverage either, it rocked. pic related is like ten minutes or so from max covergae.

It didn't look any different without the glasses at 95% coverage, can someone explain why? The sun looked as bright as normal, everything just had a sort of tinted light cast on it.

That is literally just how bright the sun is.

Yeah, I see all kinds of sour grapes posts from people who saw it partial/didn't see it at all. I have yet to see anybody who got to see the real deal describe it as anything short of really damn cool. If someone saw a 2 minute 100% total eclipse and still thought it was overrated, I'd be fairly convinced they have no soul.

Speaking of Jerry-rigging filters, my group had a set of binoculars, and a few people tried looking through them with the thin-filter eclipse glasses on their face. It worked initially, until somebody exclaimed about it getting way brighter all the sudden and discovered a hole had been burnt through the filter.

So yeah, if you're going to use a filter on a telescope for solar viewing, make sure it's on the sunward side.

Baltimore. Overcast. Saw nothing unusual. O well.

Had an emotional reaction that I did not expect when totality hit. I stood up out of my camp chair and cried a bit and couldn't take my eyes off of it and didn't realize I'd done any of it until a bit later when I had to look away as it was coming back. I was mesmerized. Terrifying. Beautiful.

I drove from Houston to Hopkinsville, KY to see it. 100% worth it.

I don't even know what to say about it. It blew my fucking mind like nothing ever has. I was trying to look at the corona through my binoculars and I was shaking so hard it was hard to keep my view on it (still got a great view though). The trip was pretty stressful, I was originally going to St. Joseph and even drove all the way up to Tulsa, but the weather didn't look great so I headed west to KY. Ended up parking in a Walmart at like 8:00AM and sitting in a field nearby with some nice people from Chicago and Virginia. There were a few clouds which was stressful, but luckily they didn't cause any problems. We saw the shadow bands, we saw the crescent shadows, we saw totality. It was awesome. I could describe what the experience looked like but I don't think I'll ever be able to describe how it made me feel. I honestly was expecting to cry when I saw it, that's just how I am, but it's like I shot right past crying to something way more intense. Total awe, it was like I could feel the shadow coming and then when totality hit my brain just fucking exploded. I was just staring at it saying "Oh wow" repeatedly like an idiot. It was a rush like nothing I've ever felt.

To the people who tried to see totality and had it ruined by weather, don't let that discourage you from trying next time. It was a transformative experience. They're rare but you will get another chance!

>tfw live in a town that was under perfect totality
Sorry mates who had to drive for that, traffic was nuts here.

You can get eyepiece filters, but frankly I would'nt trust them. WAY too likely to crack or melt in the heat.

intended for

That's pretty nice. I'll show it to my Dad -- he's a Green Flash Denier, he's convinced the green flash phenomenon is caused by looking at something orange for too long, then seeing a green afterimage. This will feed his denialism.

Just a matter of timing. I was in the Tetons and left at 4pm. I avoided Jackson Hole and used the Moran exit. Basically I saw all the backups downstream of my point on my car's GPS but thanks to a few strategic stops I never hit any traffic all the way to Denver where I was heading back to.

Wasn't much traffic at all in Idaho

However, for a given eclipse, the duration is shorter at either end of the track, as the shadow moves at set-speed but the Earth curves away, making the ground-speed increase at the ends and decrease towrd the center.

A nice rebuttal to add to Flat Earth troll threads, if you choose not to just ignore them...

2019 and 202 in South America.

>I saw what I thought might be Mercury just left of the eclipse but in hindsight was probably Regalus. I was somewhat disappointed not to see Mars.

Mars surprised me, I could not find it at all. Mercury I did not find, but then I sort of expected that. Did get Jupiter and Venus, and Regulus is in all my pictures, right in tight to the corona.

Has anybody checked to see if Mars disintegrated or something while we weren't looking?

Was in Greenwood SC. Small town, but close enough to center line and far away from the coast. Had a gigantic dark cloud come right over at C1, but then it went away and the rest of the sky cleared up after that. Was hugely anxious prior to that because a lot of cumulus clouds puffed up about two hours prior to C1.

So that fear alleviated and the rest of the eclipse went on perfectly. Wish I had been on a big hill or something, but it was alright by a line a trees, still got to see he horizon far out to the north/northeast and the south.

Totality was nuts, wasn't prepared for what it looked like with human eyes after nearly 25 years of seeing what images in books and on TV make it look like. That's because cameras obviously have to expose differently, the color of the sky with the pure black of the moon makes it seem like some weird cosmic gate. No wonder ancient civilizations saw it as a sign of doom or terror.

>tfw europoor
>tfw no total eclipse until 2081

I experienced totality in illinois. Absolutely no cloud covering in the 2 minutes 37 seconds. It was the most amazing experience of my life. Truly moving. As totality grew closer, you could see solar radiation wrapping around the moon's surface and whatever "atmosphere" that encapsulates it was illuminated to great detail. All the birds within earshot were silenced. It was fucking night in the day; and after two and a half minutes it was day once more! I ignored the warnings about protective eye gear at about 5 minutes before totality because it was just to magnificent not to experience fully.

>Be in berkeley ca
>Finally get glasses the morning of (they're handing them out for free at the library)
>it's overcast all fucking morning, can't see shit
>get really angry as the sky slightly darkens, then slightly gets bright, and then twitter blows up with people flipping out for the next 2 hours
fuck you all so much and fuck the stupid shitty bay area fog

3 things I've noticed with the eclipse descriptions (and my same experience).

1) The quiet as it approached

2) The cold

3) The silver/whatever light as the sun reappeared right after totality.