 |
| 11:09 AM |
Ever since reading about them as an elementary school student, I have longed to see a total solar eclipse. It has been a “bucket list” item. At long last, I have finally checked that one off. On Sun. 20 Aug I traveled with my wife Denise, my son Brent and my son-in-law Eric Mansfield to Rexburg, Idaho to view the 21 Aug 2017 “Great American Solar Eclipse” in totality. We had originally planned to go in the afternoon, after church, but I guess I got over-anxious about forecasts of huge crowds and traffic problems. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck in a traffic jam on I-15 somewhere south of the zone of totality, so we left around 7:30 AM and drove up to Idaho Falls, just a few miles south of the zone, where we went to church. We then drove on up into Rexburg, more or less to the center of the zone. We saw no heavy traffic at all. We had a reservation to camp in Riverside Park in Rexburg, where they had taken a large grassy area and partitioned it into hundreds of tent sites across a little river from a parking lot, which was entered by permit. I had bought this from a guy online who couldn’t go, so I couldn’t help but worry a little that he might have sold it more than once, but those worries were completely unfounded; all was perfect.
 |
| 11:14 AM |
There were probably a thousand people camped in the park. In the parking lot they had food trucks and lots of booths selling various memorabilia; the sister missionaries from the Mormon Church (mine) were there with a family history booth. I’d say most of the people who were there, who were mostly families, were from Utah, but visitors were clearly there from all over the world. I bought a T-shirt. A few people had telescopes and were practicing projecting images on tent sides, and one guy had what looked like a 12” Dobsonian. I anxiously watched my weather apps (Weather Channel, ICSC, & Observer Pro), worrying we might get clouded out right at totality, and Sunday afternoon it was looking like we were going to have some clouds at the crucial moment and were certainly going to have some overnight. Sure enough, around sunset it clouded up pretty well, so the Dobsonian guy didn’t get to use his scope.
My bio-alarm (a full bladder) woke me around 6:15 Monday morning to a perfectly clear sky, which remained through the eclipse and beyond, so that worry was also unfounded. We packed up our stuff and drove over to the home of my college friend, Steve Ott, who is on the faculty of BYU-Idaho. Again, there were worries that the whole town of Rexburg would gridlock with visitors, but that did not happen. I would say the city was extremely well prepared for the eclipse and probably got fewer visitors than expected. The predicted gridlock in Rexburg didn’t happen. Cell phone service was not interrupted, although the traffic cameras did become inaccessible. So all in all, the infrastructure held up pretty well. At the Ott’s I stayed busy trying to make a solar filter for my iPhone/2x telephoto attachment (didn’t work well at all; too many nasty internal reflections and no ability to set the phone camera’s exposure times short enough) and setting up my point-and-shoot to try and image totality.
 |
| 11:22 AM |
The eclipse started about 10:15 AM, with a little nick appearing in the side of the sun. We had lots of pairs of eclipse glasses, and I had a pair of solar binoculars from Celestron. Eric had made filters for his binoculars using some Baader astro solar film I had left over from making filters for my scopes for the transit of Venus. We also hastily assembled a pinhole camera and Steve had a small (maybe 50 mm) old telescope with a somewhat dangerous “solar” filter that screws onto the eyepiece. The eclipse glasses gave a nice sharp view and were easy to use, showing the Sun in an orange color, but the binoculars gave a much closer if whiter, less colorful, view. There was a nice line of sunspots across roughly the center of the Sun that allowed us to mark the progress of the Moon across the Sun. These were easily visible through the binoculars. I liked the simplicity and sharp view afforded by the eclipse glasses. One thing I noticed right away that was different about this total eclipse vs. the partial eclipses I’ve seen before was the symmetry: the Moon’s motion across the Sun was centered right on a diameter. I was a little disappointed with the pinhole camera because its image was small and not particularly bright. What did not disappoint, and one of the highlights of the experience, was looking at light coming through the trees in Steve’s front yard. I got lots of pictures of this, and it was easy to follow the course of the eclipse by looking at how deep the crescents were.
 |
| 11:23 AM |
I had read that you should look for diffraction fringes (“shadow bands”) moving across the ground just before and after totality, so we did and we saw them; a conveniently located white car, belonging to one of Steve’s family members, provided the perfect screen to view the shadow bands. These were spaced maybe an inch apart, they moved rapidly, and were very faint. One of our group said it looked like mirage ripples or like seeing light through rippling water and I think that’s a good comparison, although it was dimmer than what you see through water.
I also wondered if we would be able to see the Moon’s shadow approaching. Just before totality I looked out to the west-northwest, where we had previously determined the shadow would come, and sure enough I saw a shaft of darkness coming down from space. It was impressive.
 |
| 11:25 AM |
Through most of the eclipse you couldn’t tell any difference in the brightness of the sunlight, but for perhaps the last 5 minutes prior to and after totality the light was obviously dimmer and the temperature was also noticeably cooler. Some of our group saw the street lights coming on, but I didn’t because my attention was elsewhere.
 |
| 11:37 AM |
Then came totality (11:33 AM), with cheering from all over town and lots from me. It was about as dark as an hour or so after sunset, dark enough that the brighter stars and Venus were easily visible. And the corona, which was a beautiful silvery white and full of easily-seen filaments and asymmetric, was naked-eye visible out to 4-5 solar diameters. I fumbled to get this in the field of view of my point-and-shoot camera and hit the exposure button with the intention of taking continuous 5-sec exposures at maximum zoom through the 2 min 17 sec period of totality. I hit the start button without starting the program, so I got nothing photographically from that effort. In retrospect, 5-sec exposures would have been far too long anyway. I did have my 70 mm binoculars ready and prefocused, so I got them on the totally eclipsed sun and was rewarded with a beautiful and somewhat unexpected view of several large prominences along the top and trailing side of the eclipsed sun. These were bright orange to contrast with the silvery-white corona. Steve Ott had a phone app running that counted down to the Sun's emergence from behind the Moon and also mentioned out loud what to look for; this was very helpful. This allowed me to get the binoculars down in time. We got an awesome “diamond ring”/Bailey’s beads effect as totality ended. Pictures do not do this justice as they can’t capture the huge dynamic range between the darkness of the Moon’s disk and the actinic brightness of the Sun coming through Lunar topography. The time of totality was unearthly, beautiful, and over way too quick.
It got light and warmed up, and we saw the diffraction ripples again. Everything happened in reverse from there. I got some pictures of very narrow shadow crescents. I hung on to the bitter end, trying to see 4th contact. I lost the Moon from the Sun’s edge about 20 seconds before the app said the eclipse ended.
We decided to drive down to Ririe, Idaho, where Denise’s dad grew up, and also visited the Ririe-Shelton cemetery where her grandparents are buried. All the entrances were locked up to prevent people from driving in, but we were able to walk in. We saw lots of this: public parking lots and the like were blocked all over the zone of totality, presumably to force people to rent spots from the farmers who were gouging outrageous prices.
 |
| 11:42 AM |
We then started heading south along back roads, which were all jammed. We (and probably everyone else) were using Google Maps to try and avoid the mess, and just kept getting into the mess. This was the worst traffic jam I have ever experienced in my life. Idaho Falls was a congested chaos, with many freeway on ramps closed. We eventually got on I-15 and moved at about 5 miles per hour average. Things finally lightened up a little south of Pocatello, but then jammed up again north of Tremonton, Utah and stayed heavy until Ogden. We didn’t really get to full speed until the Salt Lake Valley. While it took about 4 hours to drive up to Rexburg, we needed more than 9 to come home. The Eclipse Expedition was an adventure, and was completely worth it. Now I want to do it again!
As I continue to reflect on the experience, this was among the most impressive public sights I have ever seen, up there with watching men walk on the Moon (on TV, of course) and witnessing a space shuttle launch from close enough that I not only saw it, but heard and felt it.
 |
| 12:21 PM |
And I can’t help mentioning a spiritual insight that came from watching the eclipse, which after all was a very spiritual experience for me. We read in Mormon scripture about how a mortal human cannot behold God with the natural eyes. It occurred to me that the Sun is a good analogy to this. We can’t look at it unaided for more than an instant without severely damaging our eyes (you’d better have those eclipse glasses or something equally good!). Because of this, we go through most of life not comprehending how truly grand our star is. Seeing the eclipse gave me a whole new perspective on the Sun; it’s not just a brightly glowing disk, but its corona and magnetic field extend way further into space in ways we can’t normally see and of which we are not normally aware. Of course I knew all this and more before, but seeing it gives it far deeper impact and meaning. In the same way, we mortal humans cannot bear to look directly at God. A finite mortal mind cannot perceive or indeed even conceive of a superintelligent God, yet at the same time, just as we can understand that our Sun nurtures all life on Earth, we can understand that we are all God’s children and that he loves us enough that he sent his Son in loving, atoning sacrifice for all of us. I’m grateful to have this knowledge.
 |
| 1:59 PM (post eclipse) |
