Eclipse:

Did we do it??

After so much effort and attention to detail, it felt as if all our careful planning and last-minute analyses were essential and critical to our success yesterday. We did it! We took you to the perfect place. Heh.

Well, no. All down the path of totality, even in Texas and up into areas in Ohio where overcast was predicted, the forecasts were simply too pessimistic. Many, many people who might not have seen anything if the forecasts last week and even in the final 24 hours had been right, in the event, had excellent views. I've seen great reports from Texas, Arkansas, Illinois (including ours), in Indiana an old friend was with a crowd at the Motor Speedway, others in Cleveland, my neighbor's daughter near Buffalo, a former student of mine near Plattsburgh, a scientist friend near Burlington, and on into Canada. They all saw great views during their span of totality. The weather was on their side and on our side. Luck was on our side. And we could have probably picked a location at random, and we all would have had an equally fantastic view! So sure, thank us (much appreciated, by the way), and thank your lucky stars. :)

One of the best and oldest astronomical communities online, with its focus on amateur or backyard astronomy, is cloudynights.com. There are lots of enthusaistic reports there describing those amazing prominences we saw, especially that very bright one near the bottom of the Sun (as we saw it). There are also already some nice photos showing them in detail. I encourage you to visit the cloudynights eclipse reports here and explore. Lots of good material. I'm including a screen cap of the prominences during yesterday's eclipse from one post there.

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA

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