The Confident Journal: August 2017

So...I thought I would post my whole Solar Eclipse 2017 Experience here on my blog.

First of all, my grandma emailed me about five or six months ago and said, "I just got the almanac for 2017, and it looks like there will be a solar eclipse in August and it will be going right by where you live!" So we invited her and my Uncle Carl to come and stay with us for it.

Then, about a month later, my sister, Rebekah and her husband came to stay with us for a weekend and I took them to Duke Power "World of Energy." We took a little nerd quiz there and got some free eclipse glasses.

Then, I got an email from this orchard/vineyard place that my husband and I like to go to, called "Chattooga Belle Farms," and it said that they would be having an eclipse festival there. This place is special to both of us because that is where we went on our first few dates, it's the place where he proposed, we like to go there and sit in the orchard part and take Sunday afternoon naps, and we also like to go at night to see meteor showers, because it's a beautiful overlook of the Blue Ridge Mountains and you can see almost the entire night sky. Also, my sister, Tabitha was married there.

Needless to say, we bought tickets.

Here is Grandma with Uncle Carl and my youngest sister, Tabitha at "Eclipse Fest 2017."

My husband got a VIP ticket which included a T-Shirt and a $10 voucher. All tickets included a pair of ISO glasses.

Grandma looking up at the waning sun.

Remember these necklaces from my last post?

Tab and me.

The whole crew clockwise from left: Tab, her husband--Reis, Uncle Carl, my husband--Billy, me, Grandma.

This is a picture of my hair. You can see how clear all my frizzies showed up as the sun was turning into a tiny crescent and the light was getting more and more condensed. Shadows, and objects in general, really sharpened.

Here is a picture right before totality.

Now, let's see all the phases of the sun in instant replay! (If you click on this picture and hit the "next" button, you can see them in succession.)

Disclaimer: I just used my Canon point-and-shoot. I didn't have tripod or anything. I just free-handed it and zoomed in as much as my camera would allow. I used my pair of ISO glasses and held them over the lense as a filter to get all these pictures, except the totality ones. During totality, you don't need glasses--actually, if you try to look through them during totality, you won't see anything, so you HAVE to look at it with your bare eyes!

It was really hard to take pictures at the very beginning because there was so much light and it was really hard to take pictures right before and after totality because there was so little light to work with. Anyways, with all that in mind. . .I still find these pictures pretty impressive! I'm so thankful that I got them. I feel like God gave me a present seeing totality, but even more because I was at least able to capture a fraction of the experience for you all, and for my own personal memories. :)

Here we go!

Notice that the pictures are now getting bigger. For some reason, my camera really liked zooming in from here on out. It wouldn't do it in the first few...Weird.

Totality! See the little star/planet just to the left of the eclipse? I think it's Mars or Mercury. Anyways, I think it's cool that you can even see it! (No ISO glasses for the next three pictures.)

This was the point right before the Bailey's Beads really started to come out. You can see them starting in the bottom right side of the moon. They are red.

Putting the ISO glasses "filter" back on. (Even this much of the sun was blinding!)

Notice the sun spots! They are those little dots in the center of the sun in this and the next few pictures.

Goodbye, Moon!

Okay, now that you have made it this far, here are some never-before-seen (not-even-on-Facebook) extras: Videos!

This one is when the sun had about a 1/3 left to go before totality. You can kinda see that the light is looking a little weird. The best way I can explain it is...you know how at sun set when the light gets golden and pinkish? Well, here it was like the light was turning into weird fluorescent movie-set lighting. The temperature had dropped about ten degrees at this point too.

Here, only a sliver of the sun remained, and look how bright it is still! Although, the lighting was getting noticeably more "fluorescent" and dark. A very weird experience. That blue shirt is on the ground because we were trying to see that "snake effect" thing. We could kinda see it with naked eyes, but it didn't show up in the video, so I didn't post that one.

This is the second before totality! You can hear people starting to cheer already!

And if we are friends on Facebook, you will have already seen this one....TOTALITY! Again, I'm just using a point-and-shoot and it's not made for dark lighting, so the focus isn't the best. I'm freaking out, and when I zoom in, it's really hard to keep my camera stable...I'm so glad I was able to even get this shot! I hope you enjoy it! (You can see Bailey's Beads and stars if you look really carefully!)

(I say, "It's starting to go in the danger zone" at the end, because it was just about to become blinding again...just in case you were wondering what I was talking about.)