Eclipse Expedition Report - USA'2024
I have a fantastic job. Most of the time we work remotely, but once or twice a year we meet in person. This time the venue was going to be New York. Someone threw out an idea - why don’t we move the meeting up a few days and catch the eclipse? I have a nice boss too.
The eclipse trip is a logistical nightmare. The memes about being able to check the eclipse route by checking where hotels and airbnb’s are fully booked are true. Many months before the event itself, we had to decide on a location. We chose Albany, New York, as our home base and booked a coach. Unfortunately, the company demanded that the itinerary be determined 72h before departure. With considerable cloud cover for most of the USA and deteriorating forecasts, this cost us a lot of nerves.
It took us just over 2h to get there. We chose a not very glamorous, but safe place - the car park in front of Walmart. Access to toilets, grub, drink, chairs and a whole lot of different equipment. We had clear skies in the morning, but by 2:30pm a lot of cirrus, cirrocumulus and other damned high altitude clouds had rolled in. On the plus side, this kind of cloud looks scary on forecasts - cloud cover 100% sounds like a sentence - but in practice you can observe - all the phenomena were visible. Of the disadvantages, you know - contrast sucks, details disappear, it’s impossible to focus sensibly, a halo forms around bright objects. But, well, it was too late to change the spot, and even travelling 200km didn’t guarantee anything, as a huge front was sweeping across the continent.
I had with me my trusty Canon 10x42L (for which I miraculously managed to make a filter from scraps of film left over from the previous eclipse), Delta Optical 15x70 binoculars borrowed from @krzysiekmamnaimie (thanks!) and a Canon DSLR with a 270mm lens.
There were two groups of spots on the disc. A very useful thing for focusing.
As we approached what was the total phase (C2), the birds started to go crazy - flying in circles and squawking. Plus twilight and a bright horizon. And finally there it is! The moon’s disc touches the other edge of the solar disc, the second contact and the total phase begins. This cannot be described in words. The car park is full of people, someone is shouting, someone is singing, curses are flying from some telescopes. A couple of idiots are talking on the phone. The corona and protuberances are visible. The protuberances are visible to the naked eye, using binoculars makes your jaw drop. Fortunately, the equipment has worked properly and Canon slams the set while I admire the spectactus live. It’s exceptionally long this time - 3 minutes and 23 seconds. Previous eclipses were 1m40s and 2m29s.
Obviously the whole thing is far too short. Just an hour with a hook for the phase between third and fourth contact and it’s over. As a consolation, what’s left is a lot of blurry photos, memories and a sizable group of engineers with a sudden interest in astronomy.
A lot of things went wrong, but I’m not complaining. Out of nerves I set up the tracker completely wrong. Seemingly a trivial matter, but making the alignment on the day is done with a compass. On top of that, the previous eclipse was done an the southern hemisphere. So the tracker was more of a hindrance than a help and I had to correct the framing every few minutes. But it could have been worse, much worse. A buddy had a robotic Vaonis Vespera telescope with him. Generally a very good piece of equipment, but this was probably the first major eclipse since this telescope was released. Just before the total phase, the buddy took the filter off and the telescope went into safe mode and shut down instead of taking pictures. He got pictures, but only of the partial phase…. A lot of people were unlucky with the weather. They chose Texas, which statistically has the best weather. Unfortunately, these are decisions that are made months, sometimes years in advance.
The return trip took over 6h. Apart from the driver, no one complained. We managed another eclipse. A lot of people were already talking about the next one. The next one in Spain in 2026.
More photos in the Flickr gallery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomekmrugalski/albums/72177720316289041/.
