Eclipse 2024

Monday, April 8, NH was in the path of the total eclipse. Unfortunately, my area is not in the path of totality, but I was at 95-96% range. A gajillion people from both NH and other parts of the USA headed up to the northern part of the state to view this celestial event, but I was not one of them. (source for graphic below)

Fortunately, the event was scheduled to occur shortly before 3:30pm, and the skies were for the most part clear (for a change - sun has been hard to come by since last year). I logged off work a little early and sat in front of the shed to view the event - using appropriate solar glasses of course.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to study how to get my phone or camera to capture the eclipse. After taking a couple of pics that just showed a big red/yellow disk, I decided to just give up and watch the show.

Even at the relatively little light we experienced at the greatest coverage of the sun, it was still quite bright out. Shadows were still crisp and no wildlife showed signs of calling it a night. Part of that may be because it was literally still lighter than the heavily overcast skies we have experienced regularly.

My solar array did show a cool progression. The moon started sliding over the sun at about 2:30, and had completely passed the sun about 4:30. Production is recorded in 15 minute intervals:

 

Compared to an overcast day, on 4/10/2024, which at times gave the same low input of 0.3kwh as the fullest part of the eclipse my area experienced.

All-in-all, cool to see.

Comments

[Cop Car]

I've never tried to photograph an eclipse, itself, but find the shadows during the eclipse to be interesting. This eclipse, I took no photos because we had enough cirrus cloud cover to mitigate the effect, but in 2017, I posted photos that I had taken in Cop Car, what did you do during the eclipse of 2017? and Comparing tree shadows - without & with eclipse

[bogie]

Those are still cool pictures of the shadows from 2017.

Again, I never thought to look at shadows, besides to see how crisp the lines were form the house shadow. but since I don't have any concrete or regular surfaces under trees, I'm not sure that it would have shown so well. I did see pictures of shadows on FB.

[Cop Car]

Good point. As we had plenty of concrete and a conveniently sprawling cottonwood tree at that time, I gave no thought to others not having the same advantage. Too, this time I did not notice the effect and perhaps it's because we no longer have that cottonwood tree to demonstrate for us rather than the presence of the cirrus clouds.