It Was a Total Eclipse of the Sun

We are back in Hot Springs, back at The Vista at the Lake where we sat out Bud’s knee replacement surgery a year ago. Better times this year.

We got here in time for me to see Adler compete in the state Winds competition for marching band. This is just the wind players with no percussion instruments or color guard. The percussion and color guard each compete separately. This is because it’s an indoor competition on the basketball court and the whole band wouldn’t fit. Adler was disappointed with their performance, I thought they looked and sounded great. They still won gold as they were the only school that sent a winds contingent!

The other thing we were in time for was the eclipse. Hot Springs was in the path of totality and we had clear skies. This is a shot of the start of the eclipse that Jamie took. She taped one lens of a pair of eclipse glasses over the camera lenses on her phone. I couldn’t get mine to focus, but hers came out pretty good.

Here’s the progression she took as the moon moved in front of the sun.

The sun is almost hidden.

At this point it was still bright out, just a bit dimmed. But if you look closely at the points of light in the shadow of the tree you can see that the smallest ones are all crescent shaped, like the occluded sun.

Here we are, Bud, me, Adler, Jacey and Tia, all on the back porch waiting for the last of the sun to be covered. (Bria is on the pool cover chasing leaves, oblivious to the whole thing.)

And then the sun was covered and you could look without the glasses. This is a photo with my phone. It makes the corona look way too large.

And though the sun didn’t look right, I did manage to catch one of the planets that showed up in the now darkened sky.

Adler remembered to take a picture of the darkness around us with the lighted clouds in the distance at the edge of the area of totality.

Jamie had her regular camera out, and took this shot.

That bright spot on the bottom wasn’t the sun being uncovered, that was a solar flare!

It was a wonderful experience and I’m glad we were here for it. And very glad we had clear skies. That night we had thunderstorms.