Rare, Beautiful and Fleeting

Those of you who know me and those of you who read this blog you know that I enjoy the occasional astronomical event. A total eclipse of the sun is one of the hardest events to see and less than 2% of the people on earth see one live. There have been two total solar eclipses visible in the US over the last 7 years and I was fortunate enough to be able to see both. The last one was in 2017 and I traveled out west just north of Boise Idaho to see it. I described the last eclipse I saw as "rare, beautiful and fleeting" and it is one of those things that once you see one all you want to do is you to see it another one so I wanted to make sure I did whatever I could the see the this one as it would be relatively easy to see with a little effort and planning.

In order to see an total solar eclipse you have to be in an narrow window of around 100 miles wide along the path of the eclipse. The path of totality for April 2024 eclipse went from San Antonio Texas all the way up into Canada so there were a lot of large cities in the path like Dallas, Cleveland, Buffalo and Montreal. Reservations for most of the cities in south along the path of the eclipse were sold out a year in advance since the weather was expected to be better there. However a week before the actual eclipse the best weather was expected to be in the north east in upstate New York, Vermont and Maine. My plan was to look at the weather 4 or 5 days before the eclipse and drive to where ever the clearest weather was going to be. About a week and a half before the eclipse I had a reservation in Syracuse NY for the Sunday before the eclipse since that would allow be to get between Cleveland, OH and Sherbrook Canada on the day of the eclipse depending on the weather forecast. 

As the eclipse got closer it appeared that the further east you went the better the weather was going to be. On the Saturday evening before the eclipse I changed my plans and got a reservation in Montreal and canceled my hotel in Syracuse. I was surprised how easy it was to get a hotel reservation in Montreal. I guess nobody expected the weather to be good up that way. 

On Sunday my wife and I drove up to Montreal. It wasn't a bad drive and we got to the hotel around dinner time. When I checked in the person at the desk said they were no vacancies as I guess other people had the same idea as I did and made some last minute reservations. The  holiday inn express wasn't bad and there was a restaurant across the parking lot so we won't have to get in the car again. Which was good because Waze on my phone stopped getting updates right after we crossed into Canada. Luckily Waze had downloaded the map so we were able to navigate to the hotel without have to revert to a paper map. 

The Sunday before we left to go to Montreal I made a reservation for a hotel in Magog Canada. Again I was a little surprised to be able to get a hotel that was in the path of the eclipse at the last minute. This was a nice hotel on a golf course with a restaurant and the plan was to go there after the eclipse and have a nice dinner. 

On Monday morning we made an hour drive to Magog. I had chose Magog because it was close to the center line of the eclipse and had a large park on a lake that would make a good place to view the eclipse. We didn't hit much traffic getting to Magog until we got close to the center of town. There were two parks in town and by the time we got there the first park was full so we went to my second choice. There was no problem parking in the parking lot. It was a little muddy because of recent rain and melting snow that they had got a few days ago. In fact there was still snow on the ground in parts of the park. However it was a warm and sunny day with temperature close to 60 degrees. We parked then walk a few hundred feet to the edge of the lake on one of the walk ways next to a number of other people with telescopes and photography equipment. Here was our view of the lake. 

The clear blue sky made me happen and once we got there I knew we would see the eclipse. It took about a half hour to set up my equipment. The last total eclipse I had bought a telescope and was able to attach a phone to the eye piece to get some decent pictures. This time I upped my game and created a setup to be able to attach a DLSR camera with a telephoto lens to my telescope drive so I could get some even better photos this time.

I spent some time over the last couple of months putting this rig together and testing it out. It basically has my Canon R10 with a 100mm-400mm telephoto lens on it. I actually rented a 1.4 teleconverter to get more magnification. Besides the camera I also had my 70 mm telescope attached to my telescope drive. The advantage to being able to attach everything to the telescope drive meant that I didn't have to keep adjusting the camera and telescope as the sun moved. Once I set everything up and got it align all I had to do was to turn the camera on and take the pictures. 

This rig worked well. With the solar filter on my camera and telescope I was easily able to see the eclipse start as the moon started to cover the sun. I took picture every 10 mins or so up until the totality started. Where we were we would have 3 minutes and 30 seconds of totality. It goes by so fast so you have to be very efficient in taking pictures. I had a plan about what pictures I wanted to take and how to take them. The problem is there is no way to practice taking picture of a total eclipse so you have to guess at the best setting. 

As totality was approached the sky got dimmer and the temperature probably dropped about 10 degrees. I could see the moon was close to covering the sun looking through my telescope so I took the solar filter off my camera and telescope and waited for totality. 

When totality came the sky went suddenly dark for a second then the corona appeared behind the sun. I took a few moments to enjoy it before taking some pictures. I ended up taking about 20 pictures at different shutter speeds and magnifications. I didn't get all the shots I wanted but I didn't want to spend all my time playing with the camera because that would have taken time away from enjoying the moment. I did have time for my wife to take a selfie of me and the eclipse. It was a cool as last time and also different. 

This time there was a solar flare that was easily visible with the naked eye at the 7 o'clock position. The sky did not get as dark as the last time. I was able to see Venus and Jupiter but didn't see Mercury or the comet that might have been visible. Here is a wide angle picture I took

The bright spot in the middle bottom of the photo is Venus. This picture or any other picture I have seen doesn't really show the details of the corona. There was a clear black circle of the moon in the middle with a bright light of the solar flare at the bottom. It looked like the flame of the blow torch coming out of the sun. The white corona around the sun was smaller and denser than last time but had a lot of wispy points especially at the top and right side. As you have seen already I got some good pictures of the solar flares and corona but in person there were more details and colors were more intense. I was glad I had the telescope because that let me see the eclipse in ever more details than the pictures I took. As the total eclipse was about to end I took one last look through the telescope to try and burn the image into my brain then tried to get a few last picture. I was trying to get the diamond shot showing the Sun coming through the valleys of the moon as the eclipse ends. I got a good shot last time. This time I wasn't as lucky in my timing. 

I did get sun coming out from behind the moon but got a much bigger starburst this time. Either my timing was off or that is the way it was because I have seen similar picture from professional photographers. 

Once the totality was over I put the solar filters back on and took picture every 10 mins until the end of the eclipse. The partial eclipse has started around 2:15 pm and totality was a 3:27pm. By the time the eclipse was over it was 4:45pm. It was a long day to be standing outside but it was fun not only seeing the eclipse but talking to the people around us and exchanging stories. We met a number of people who had reservations in Texas but at the last minute flew to Montreal and then drove to Magog. 

People had started to leave the park right after to totality so by the time we packed up everything and got back in the car it was 5:30pm. There was some traffic in town that took us about a half hour to get through but once we got out of town it only took us a few minutes to drive the 4 miles to our hotel. 

The hotel was nice and even higher end than I thought although it did need some maintenance in spots. After we checked in we walked by the restaurant and were told we need a reservation for dinner. The earliest reservation was 8pm and looking at the menu it was very expensive and there wasn't a lot on it I wanted to eat. I would have gladly spent the money if they had something that appealed to me but I didn't want to spend a lot for a meal I didn't like so we passed on the restaurant. Luckily we had brought a lot of food with us expecting it to be hard to find places to eat with all the crowds. It wasn't the gourmet meal I was hoping for but it was still good. We had a balcony overlooking the mountains which was perfect. 

We hung out on the balcony. I had a few beers with me which tasted great after a long day. Of course they were Blue moons after the eclipse. After the sun went down we moved inside and relaxed the rest of the night. The drive home the next day was almost 8 hours so we were tired when we got back. We drove over 1000 miles in 3 days. We would had made more of a vacation out of this trip but it is the in between season in Canada and upstate NY and VT so there was nothing really open that we wanted to see. Still we got to see the eclipse and had some fun along the way. I don't know if I will see another total eclipse. The next one in the US will be on 2044. There are other ones between now and then but they will be in Europe, Africa and Australia so would require a lot of travel. Although the eclipse I saw this time and 2017 were definitely one of the more memorable moments in my life I don't know if the travel involved to see another one would be worth it. We'll see...