Mind you, here in the southern Appalachians, I didn't expect anything highly dramatic, but I figured it might get dim outside. Nope, without the glasses and looking directly, I wouldn't have known it was happening.
I took a picture of the parking lot I was in and it looked normal, but actually looking at it felt like the sun was broken.
People don't talk about what the world looks like in the moments before total eclipse. Everything looks flat and desaturated. Kinda looks like a photo from the 90s but in HD.
Yeah, i hate to say it, but unless you're in the path of totality, it's pretty lame. Sure, the light gets weird, and you can make neat little crescents with shadows, but that's about it
Being in totality is without a doubt, one of the most awe-inspiring things you could ever witness
Had a few people tell me how they are in the 90% path and didn’t see a reason for seeing totality.
I tried explaining it to them in terms of sex: “I was 95% close to getting laid! Sure, that was probably fun, but you should really see totality.” Realized they just didn’t think it was worth it as an experience. Their loss.
I..... Disagree. But I'm a space nerd anyways so the thought of 2 celestial bodies as far away as they are from each other to be such a perfect ratio that they basically perfectly overlap, to be just the neatest little cosmic joke on our improbable planet. It's a fun quirk and being at all able to see it is neat.
Also, I'm sorry but I was in northern Appalachian where for like half an hour it got slowly darker by just a little bit at a time and by the time it got mostly covered a perfect cloud coverage hit to make it viewable from the naked eye behind the clouds as a crescent for the next hour and it was very cool to see that sliver of crescent sun just hanging up there.
What percentage was the eclipse? It probably got dim, but human eyes are very good at filtering out wide range of intensity changes to handle both full sun and cloudy sky. You really only notice an eclipse maybe at 80-90 %. But it isn't that special even at 99 %. On the other hand, total eclipse is absolutely incredible.
Don't feel bad. I 3D printed the NASA approved pinhole camera to see an 80% eclipse I never got to see.
According to NOAA the chance of overcast has historically been 53% for the the 8th of April for where I live. I was on the the wrong side of the 53% chance.
At my age, in 20 years I probably will be dead according to statistics.
Half the state is crazy for Pigmy Hippo day, the other half go NUTS for Rex Manning day. They've got no time for whatever the cancer orb and wolf trigger are up to.