Solar Eclipse 2017

In August 2017, we flew to Oregon to get together with our friends and see the total solar eclipse on August 21.

Video

I rented a 360Fly 4K for this trip. Use the smartphone Youtube app (and a "cardboard" viewer if you have one) to view the video "VR" style.

Photos

Click on the thumbnails below to see the pictures. Or, if you only want to see the photos, go to my Smugmug gallery.

10:17 AM Totality with Regulus in bottom-left 10:19 AM Diamond ring 10:19 AM Diamond ring 10:19 AM Diamond ring 10:53 AM

this website shows that the star in lower-left from the sun is Regulus.

See 4 planets during the total eclipse

360-degree photo

Here is an image from Ricoh Theta SC.

The Trip

We booked Comfort Inn in Newport, OR back in October 2016 (already priced at $330/night for the eclipse date). What we didn't know back then was that Newport can be very foggy and cloudy very often.

We flew into Eugene, OR and rented a car on August 20, 2017, the day before the eclipse. Weather.gov said the sky (cloud) coverage forecast would be 90% (brown in the image below) in Newport and 10% (blue) in Corvalis. On our way to Newport, we checked out Corvallis, OR for a good location. Oregon State University (downtown Corvallis) was planning a big eclipse event but we went to outskirts of the city to avoid possible obstruction by buildings or people. We also checked the time of the eclipse for Corvallis on EclipseWise.com (9:04 .. 11:37 AM; totality 10:16:56 .. 10:18:37 AM).

Sky (cloud) coverage Eclipse time in Corvallis, OR

In the morning of August 21, Newport was totally under thick clouds. So, we started driving toward Corvallis. Instead of the biggest traffic jam of the century we were afraid of, we saw very, very few cars on the road. The sky totally cleared up just a few miles away from Newport. We arrived at Corvallis on time.

We parked on the road between a ranch with sheep and another one with cows. Two other cars that parked next to us were both from California. As the eclipse got close to totality and it became darker, all the sheep went back into the barn on their own probably thinking it's time to go to sleep. After the totality as it got brighter, the sheep came back out baaing lively like in the morning. Cows didn't care. They just stood there ;)

Resources

  • MrEclipse.com and EclipseWise.com are the go-to sites for all solar eclipse matters. I attended the talk by Fred Espenak (Mr. Eclipse himself) on June 6, 2017 at Adobe San Jose headquarters.
  • I also attended Sunnyvale Photo Club: How to Photograph the Total Eclipse by David Newswanger. His slides with detailed instructions really helped me capture great photos of the eclipse and I'm truly grateful.
  • Ecipse2017.com is another great resource. This particular page showed the weather for the locations in the path of the eclipse.
  • SunCalc.org shows the sun's direction at any location at any time (not just for the time of solar eclipse). Great tool for photographers.
  • Weather.gov also had a special page for the eclipse