The Eclipse

July 2, 2019

Every Eclipse is different, but in many respects this eclipse invoked memories of the circumstances of 2017. As in 2017 large numbers of visitors descended on small towns with limited roads. Fortunately the largest city La Serena had a commercial airport and was a resort city in itself. But even this destination was close to being overwhelmed by the nearly 300,000 visitors that arrived.

La Serena was actually well within totality. Unfortunately our trip meteorologist Jay Anderson found that it frequently had low clouds during this winter day. The same applied to the other large city La Higuera. Thus the smart groups (like ours) planned to head inland to higher ground.

The lead up

The entire group was over 300 people divided into Southbound (us) and Northbound sections. These were, in turn, broken into smaller sections. We had been the "galaxy" group for most of the trip. Here we became the "blue" group. Our southbound section was divided between a number of hotels. Our hotel (the Enjoy) had at least 3 other eclipse companies there including Melita Tours.

This eclipse had a couple of interesting aspects to it. First it was going to occur nearly at sunset. The end of the eclipse (4th contact or C4) was going to be at 1° above the horizon. It was rumored that our site did not have a perfect horizon which was confirmed during the briefing (as it turned out it had a more interesting feature which is described later).

Since the sun angle was so low there was an excellent chance for Shadow Bands. In 14 previous tries I had never seen these so they were a personal target for me.

The briefing consisted of the usual. Use your eye protection except during totality. The sequence of the eclipse. Parts of the sun. All important stuff especially for first timers.

Then came the part that grabbed everyone's full attention - the weather report. Jay said that the prospects at the site were like 99% (he said it differently, but that was the point). Surprisingly the forecast for La Serena was also good. This caused many of the casual observers to remain in town and watch from the beach. What Jay did not forecast was the weather to the north (since it did not apply to our group). I learned later that several groups planned their eclipse closer to the centerline and had clouds. Oh well. .

Our site was east toward the town of Vicuña. With a access via a single two lane road epic traffic jams like we experienced in Madras were expected. Thus our departure was set for 7 AM (for a late afternoon eclipse). I personally heard no complaints (especially from those who had been with us in Oregon). No need to lobby for an early imager's bus!

The Eclipse Site

So shortly after 7AM our buses were rolling to pick up from the other hotels and then head east. Even by this point traffic was starting to be bad, but was still moving (we heard an hour later La Serena was gridlocked). The previous night I had set my equipment up in my room and had broken it into assemblies then loaded them into "the cube". This eliminated any dust getting into my optics since we were warned the site might be dusty.

Our site was located in a valley nearly in Vicuña. This was one of Chile's Pisco regions and we passed a number of fields. it is also the location of the Cerro Tololo Observatory that we would visit on Thursday.

Our group selected a futball (soccer) field in the small town of El Tambo. This offered a large viewing area. The futball team further accommodated us by cutting down some trees that would have blocked the view.

And so we arrived with little difficulty. The site proved perfect for our use. We had many more imagers on this trip when compared with previous trips. My guess is that in 2017 many were on their own (we almost were). In 2015 there was a long line of us along the ice, but the weight limits made it challenging. In 2010 we are scattered over the grounds of the hotel (most choosing to stay at the hotel instead of going to the prepared site). The other trips since 2010 have all been on ships where the imaging area was crowded, but not like this. The large space allowed everyone to spread out. Several opted for more serious equipment than I brought.

Given the weather forecast about 1/2 of our group chose to stay in town. That made the site even less crowded since it was mostly the imagers that chose to come east. My immediate travel group of 6 included 3 imagers (two of us fairly serious).

One would think that by arriving so early folks would be bored. I found the opposite occurred. Everyone staked out their spots upon arrival and then we just hung out and chatted. It was the least stressful eclipse experience EVER.

The arrow in the above marks the approximate track and location of the sun at totality.

As First Contact approached everyone started assembling their equipment

Michel asked us to assemble for a group photo

Eclipse Photos

And so onto the main event

At 19:23:39 UTC we were able to detect the first chunk out of the sun. It is a little hard to see, but look at about 8 o'clock on the rim.

This shows the location of the sun as totality approached (about 10 minutes more)

Unfortunately my own exposure for capturing the diamond ring is entirely inappropriate. In 2017 I blamed the result on smoke. This year there was no excuse. Fortunately my friend Larry Shore offered one of his.
©️2019 Larry Shore All Rights Reserved

The moon then covered the sun and totality began. I did not capture any prominence activity at C2. My photos show a single bead. I recorded the time of this image as 20:38:44 UTC.

This is my HDR of the corona. It is a combination of 9 different exposures that were processed by 3 different tools.

Per my style I have intentionally not over processed the image (a la Druckmüller) but have instead tried for the final image to represent what I saw. I think this image does not emphasize the solar brushes enough. These are the magnetic lines from the poles of the sun. Visually these were striking and are what drew my eyes.

Based on the Soho photos I anticipated rather strong streamers. What we actually got were two blobs. Compared to the sun in 2017 I was rather unimpressed. I do not remember seeing some of the detail that the HDR image shows.

Adding the prominences manually attempts to show what I saw. In the version here I have only added the most brilliant. In another version they look a little tacked on, but visually they were easy to see so I will leave it to the reader which is more accurate.

Showing the moon image is artist's choice since that is visible only in the camera.

As we crept toward C3 a surprise! Prominences! Small but when I looked at the Halpha before loading the buses I saw nothing. A clean edge of the sun. So while these were small they were there. I recorded the time of this image as 20:40:59 UTC.

Lastly the beads appeared. Unlike C2 these were a richer display. Of course by this point I was no longer looking through my binos so I will have to trust what my camera captured. I recorded the time of this image as 20:41:11 UTC.

Shadow Bands

Despite doing 14 previous eclipses including Svalbard (did not need a white sheet for that one) I have never seen shadow bands. I anticipated that this one could be my chance. Yet I was skeptical at first when I heard "Shadow Bands" called out. Since my own phone was recording a sound track for my movie I did not want to disturb it. But I looked and there they were - everywhere. While I had always been told the effect was subtile the bands were, in fact, obvious with significant contrast.

click to play movie

The bands are really hard to see in the video. What I have done right (below) is to blink between two frames of the movie.

Solar Eclipse Maestro Predictions

During 2017 and this year I used Solar Eclipse Maestro to control my camera during eclipse. This allowed me to look at the eclipse instead of fussing with the camera.
One of the features is to predict what the Bailey's beads will look like. So how good was the prediction?

As I mentioned above I did not capture any beads at C2. So either the prediction was wrong or they occurred between exposures.

The prediction for C3 agreed more closely to what I observed

Celebration

Following totality it was time to party. The eclipse was still happening, but the road was already bumper to bumper. They were serving champagne instead of Corona, but there was Corona in my fridge so I partook. (I never did buy the Corona)

Finally there was one last bit of the eclipse. While our site did not permit us to see C4. It presented us with something that was arguably cooler.