As someone who's paranoid about missing the eclipse due to cloudy weather, I've been working with a few people to launch a high altitude balloon during the eclipse: https://eclipseplus.ca/
We have several cameras on board, including one that points at the sun and one that takes video. It all gets live-streamed to the ground (actually, that's my contribution to the project - the communications system) and sent off to YouTube.
We're launching from New Brunswick, Canada, and we'll be going up to about 30km, or 100k feet. So the clouds definitely won't be an issue for us.
How do you keep a camera pointed when attached to a balloon? I've done a similar balloon launch, but very much on the cheap. Our payload had no stabilization, so it just acted as a pendulum under the balloon, and would spin as the torsion of the rope commanded. I've had thoughts after seeing those results, but just never had the opportunity to try it again. Based on the pics on your link, my balloon looked very similar. I'm guessing you'll be using a totally different balloon than those on the landing page.
Our payload has no stabilization either, and in past launches we've had quite a bit of rotation and swinging. Here's a video of one of last launch, for reference: https://peertube.scd31.com/w/7CQCYB4BmJzngoZTiMociY
To point the camera we have a lot of clever software and hardware. I didn't have any part in it, so I'll try to explain it as best I can. There's a diagram here, which hopefully will help you to follow along: https://eclipseplus.ca/Project_Details/Payload_Design/
We have a fixed camera mounted above a mirror. The mirror is on a special gimbal, which can be maneuvered using two servos and a bit of math. For coarse aiming, we have an IMU on board which uses the magnetic field of the Earth to figure out its orientation. For fine aiming, we do a bit of image processing to try and center the sun in the field of view of the camera. It's not perfect, but since we're only capturing still images, it's okay if not all the images have the sun in view.
Also of note is the filter, which starts in-place (to protect the optics) and automatically moves out of the way during totality. It also moves back into place afterwards so that we can continue safely taking images after the eclipse.
The balloons on the landing page are accurate! Those pictures are from past launches, which used the same payload (with some changes between each launch)
That's a much more hacker way that my thoughts of adding a swivel to the rope and some sort of tail on the payload to attempt to keep it oriented with the wind. I will definitely keep an eye on your project to see how it works out. It sounds like an interesting idea to be sure. Good luck! Just remember that whatever is happening with the balloon to at least enjoy the event for yourself as well
I wonder if you could attach multiple lines to a bar/triangle that's fixed under the balloon. This would eliminate the rope twisting/untwisting, but of course nothing stops the balloon itself from rotating.
to 90000'? that would be a tall order no pun intended. the bar would be heavy. one thing to keep in mind is that the gas will continue to expand, so that the size of the balloon visible in the GP's comment show it about 8' on the ground which is similar to my experience. by the time the balloon reaches burst altitude, it has increased in size to about 45'. this is part of the reason for needing such a long rope which allows for the swinging and torsion to this extent
Awesome! I'm driving myself to Kouchibouguac to experience the totality. Considering that maritimes is always cloudy during this time of the year I'm not expecting much of a "view" but just want to experience the total darkness. Where we live (NS) we are getting about 95% darkness but I figured a couple of hours drive is worth to experience 100%!
The adage I’ve heard is that 90+% eclipses only give you 10% experience of totality.
I’m in Charlottetown, and I’ll be driving to North Cape (as will the rest of the Island). Between worrying about the weather, I’m also concerned that I won’t be able to get to North Cape in the first place.
So far, I managed to beat the solar glasses rush by ordering in January. I’m trying to figure out the timing to get to North Cape early enough to have a spot to park, but not too early that my kids will lose their minds with the waiting.
More accurately, any partial eclipse gives you 0% of the experience of totality.
During totality, you see the Sun's corona with your own eyes.
In any partial phase, you are seeing the Sun's photosphere - the same bright surface of the Sun you see on every clear day. So you need eye protection.
When the Moon completely blocks the photosphere in totality, you get to see the much fainter solar corona. The corona is only about as bright as a full Moon.
You don't need and should not use solar glasses during totality. Don't take my word for it, if you get them go out at night and look at the Moon through them (doesn't have to be full).
Your kids are fairly young? You want to keep them safe during the partial phases, and also make sure they get to view totality unfiltered.
There was a lengthy discussion on Reddit the other day, nominally about photography but also about viewing with your own eyes:
It bums me out that there is so much misinformation going around about eclipse viewing safety, specifically the notion that you should wear eclipse glasses during totality.
In that same Reddit thread, someone cites a misinformed New York Times article. I'll link it here because it was downvoted and hidden and is worth a quick read (along with our replies) to see how badly mistaken a major news publication can be:
Absolutely. I've never experienced a total eclipse before but I hear the difference between 95% and 100% is stark; due to the logarithmic nature of the human eye. I'm not even sure if 95% coverage would even be noticeable without eclipse glasses.
I'm from NS myself (Halifax) and have been trying to convince my parents to drive up to NB to see the eclipse. I'll be home for Easter so that'll probably be my last attempt!
Yes, the experience associated with a picture is what matters. Even if it’s a live stream of the eclipse, it’s not too different that looking at photos/videos of other eclipses online.
You need to feel the change in air and the sounds to get the whole experience.
The actual bandwidth is 500kbps, or about 350kbps usable after FEC. I'm encoding video at 640x480, 12FPS. It's almost entirely custom software. I'm using a Gstreamer pipeline to take in the video stream, encode it, and encapsulate it. From there, I packetize it, run it through an LDPC encoder (for error correction), data whitening, and finally send it to an FSK modem to convert it into radio waves. On the ground station I basically do the same thing in reverse.
At 1W transmission, I've gotten video over 140km from a balloon to the ground. Most of that distance is horizontal - the winds tend to blow the balloon quite far. The math says the system should be good to at least 250km.
If you're new to this: from experience during past eclipses, make sure you're in the area of totality. Our family was on the edge of that area for the last one and thought it'd be enough - it wasn't, as we sadly learned sitting in a slightly dim parking lot. You need to be right under the center of it to get the full experience.
Just want to emphasize this. The difference between near-totality and totality is immense.
A partial eclipse is a crescent sun, similar to how our moon is a crescent much of the time. The crescent is shaped mildly differently due to the occlusion, but really after that novelty is gone, it's just daytime with a crescent sun.
A sky with a total solar eclipse is a new, third kind of sky that is neither like day or night. It's as different from those as they are from one another, and what you will feel seeing it will be as though you have lived your whole life during the nighgband are seeing a night sky with the milky way for the first time. If you have the opportunity, don't miss it.
The only thing this comic gets wrong is neglecting to mention the Y axis is a log scale. https://xkcd.com/1880/
Do you mean "in the path of totality" or "right under the center line?"
I live "in the path" and I've got friends nearby with rural spots to watch from.
Or: I can take a bit of a drive and find a spot to hang out pretty much directly under the center line, but they will be crowded and there isn't much of a practical way to avoid that.
The difference, according to maps, seems to be just a few seconds of total occlusion. Or is there more to it than that?
Aim for 80% inside the path. The couple extra seconds you'll gain from being dead center is usually not worth the hassle. clouds is your biggest enemy day of.
> I'm absolutely sure that it is completely coincidental.
In the same way that the city streets in DC coincidentally lay out to the mason's square and compass shape. The forfathers of this city were probably travellers from the future that knew the significance of this event, and laid out the entire city based on it. They just forgot to carry the one somewhere, and missed the alignment
But do you really think the rather small city of Norwalk, Ohio was planned for a nearly-perfect alignment for the center of the 2024 NA total eclipse? (Feel free to look on the eclipse map of your choice -- I'm not trying to deep-link or screenshot that, and it would be beneficial to the viewer to be able to pan around. And it's easy to find:
When panning around the eclipse map, Norwalk is about the only city directly on the center-line up North in Ohio.)
(That said: The alignment of Main Street to the center path of the 2024 eclipse in Norwalk might indeed be planned. Sandusky, Ohio is not far from there, and is said to have been designed around masonic symbols[a]. I don't discount the idea. And that's part of what makes it alluring to me, even though I tell myself that it must be a coincidence.)
I viewed a partial eclipse in 2017 in Columbus, Ohio, through heavy clouds and whatever random communal eclipse-viewing glasses that someone handed me.
It was weird and spectacular, and absolutely worth spending some time (in a tightly time-tracked job) to go outside and have a good long look at: There was absolutely a crescent-shaped sun visible behind those clouds, and that is a thing that I will never forget.
I don't think it was a ruined experience at all, though I certainly hope that this next eclipse is a lot better for whatever viewing-point I decide to choose and I understand that a cloudless sky is ideal.
For the weather, I realize that clouds may pop up. And, I’m not sure how much I can rely of local / regional weather to tell me where, within a 4-5 hour radius, I should drive for best conditions.
Lining these two up (as well as handling traffic), will be difficult I imagine. For what it’s worth, I’ll be in Austin.
This is my biggest concern for eclipse day. In the past, when ever I spend money to take pictures of the sky, something always goes wrong. Rent a camera with the IR filter removed specific for astro purposes...it rains so much that the state park with very dark skies closes due to flooding. Have a free weekend with no scheduled activities, a new moon on the weekend, and most importantly, blessing from the SO, yup, weather.
This time of year is thunderstorm season, and I'm already concerned about it since I've purchased plenty of solar protection for my gear. I'm just hoping my cunning plan of buying it all last year so far in advance confuses whatever it is that decides when I spend money we get bad visibility. ????
I happened to get invited to friends of my in-laws who own a vacation property on the Oregon coast for the 2017 eclipse. Of course, the Pacific coast is dicey at best, so we were crossing our fingers. When the time came, the stars lined up and we had that magical moment, except right at that moment, the waste truck came through picking up the bins. If you have the opportunity, GO. The worst case is you don't see it. The best case is one of the most memorable experiences of your life.
Aha, I see that even astrophotographers are not exempt from the curse of new equipment :) Good on you for buying your equipment well in advance, and may you have clear skies on the day.
If the 8th is anything like today then 50% of the eclipse path would be covered by the clouds. You'd have to drive 600+ miles to get out of the overcast.
I drove from the northeast down to South Carolina to see the 2017 eclipse in the center of totality.
All I can say is ... if you haven't experienced this in your life, go see it. But you must be in the arc of totality, even 99% isn't going to do it. The closer you get to the centerline, the longer totality lasts.
And it's something else. It gets very dark, very quickly. It gets cold, the stars come out, it feels surreal.
I did the same! I convinced my wife that we should put our 2 week old daughter in the car for her first roadtrip, and we made our way very slowly to the Carolinas. We were going to catch it in the mountains, near Boone, NC, but it was cloudy over there, so we frantically made our way into South Carolina. We managed to find clear enough skies just minutes before totality.
Drove from New England to southern Illinois and hiked into a park forest right on the line, directly between the points of greatest eclipse and greatest duration. Definitely the wildest natural phenomena I’ve ever witnessed, it literally took my breath away. Hard to imagine topping it without actually riding a rocket into space.
I found this site a few weeks back. It was built for generic astronomical clear-sky use in the US and Canada (at least) but it has this page[1] for weather along the eclipse track.
Does anyone have a recommendation for the easiest way to see the eclipse if I haven’t started planning until now, from California? Flights to Mezatlan are basically full so it would involve a bunch of connections. Optimizing for being able to fly Saturday, and back Monday, with minimal hassle (eg connections or long drives) and hopefully a city that has more than a few seconds of totality. Thanks in advance for any tips
Find a number of good spots on the map that seem likely to have clear weather, take good notes on each one of them, and get your plane tickets and other things in order as late as you dare in case the weather might change?
Having seem 5 at this point (mostly pure luck), I would spend 20 hours driving to see one. I'm doing 8 and at least I'll get a neat camping trip out of it if the weather decides to be a nuisance.
I got the ones B&H was selling and they're real (it also came with filters for phones and an app which I find suspicious). Amazon is way too risky for something like this when there's known fakes going around.
If you will be in the path of totality, you don't need eclipse glasses.
Just wear your regular sunglasses, and don't look at the Sun during the partial phases.
Bring a white sheet to put on the ground, and a large piece of paper with pinholes stuck into it. With your sunglasses on, look away from the Sun and project it through the pinholes onto the sheet.
Keep watching as totality approaches, and something magical may happen: ripples of light and dark on your sheet, as if you were at the bottom of a stream or river.
Then look up and you may see the Moon's shadow approaching at high speed!
When the shadow overtakes you, turn around and make sure there are no little specks of light around the edge of the Sun. (These are called the diamond ring and Baily's beads.) A quick glance won't hurt you, just keep them out of the center of your vision so you don't have an afterimage.
Then take your sunglasses off and behold the awesome solar corona.
As soon as any of those specks come back, turn back around, sunglasses go on, and maybe head out to beat the crowds!
Nothing wrong with those, but again, they are only for the partial phases of an eclipse. You do not need them and should not use them during totality.
A partial eclipse is nothing special. There isn't much point in looking at it. Just as you have seen a crescent moon many times, now you will see a crescent sun.
It won't even have any of the cool craters and textures of the crescent moon. Boring!
Totality is where it's at. And if you forget about trying to look directly at the partial phases, you don't need eclipse glasses.
BTW your eclipse adventure doesn't necessarily end when the eclipse does. If you are driving home your navigation apps might try to send you on more adventures.
The main roads and the reasonable alternates might all be slow over a wide area, leading to the apps thinking that various roads that would never normally be suggested would be better.
Here is what a friend told my happened when he was trying to get from the middle or Oregon to the Bay Area after the 2017 eclipse:
> Google kept sending us onto logging roads: we bailed on the first when we were told to turn onto a non-existent road; we bailed on the second when a van came out and told us that ~5 cars were stuck axle-deep in mud; we bailed on the third when we got to a sign informing us that we were about to enter an off-road-vehicle trail.
I drove down to Carbondale, IL last eclipse from Chicago, usually a 5 hour drive. It took 8. Not too bad! Pulled over in some country rode with a patch of clear sky. It doesn't really matter where you are: the show is up there.
The moment the eclipse ended we drove back to the interstate, which minutes prior had been empty.
It was bumper-to-bumper. Like something out of a cartoon.
The drive back to Chicago took 14 hours. I decided to follow Waze, which took me (and an endless line of cars with the same idea) through a one-lane dirt road through a bunch of farms.
The people who lived there took lawn chairs out and sat down to drink beers and watch the strange procession.
Stopped for lunch at a crossroads Panda Express. It was bedlam. Thousands of people all looking to eat something in rest stop that usually feeds dozens. The crew of pimply highschoolers resorted to slapping spoonfuls of random faux Chinese food into Styrofoam containers and giving it out for free. "Just take it!"
The only scary part was being caught by one of those Midwestern thunderstorms about two hour out from Chicago--at 2am, after diving for about 18 hours straight, sticking my hand out of the window to wet it before slapping myself on the face to stay awake (no way to pull over--not when visibility is ~zero).
I ran into clouds at the last eclipse. It was still cool, but I didn’t get to actually see it. I was thinking of going to Texas this time around, but will end up much further north. I’m hoping I get lucky. If not, I’ll be planning some international trips around future eclipses. This is a bucket list thing for me.
I have pretty vivid memories of my first partial solar eclipse from when I was in school, but being in the path of totality was a completely different experience, and about 10,000x better, even without seeing it.
Yeah. We have tickets to the event at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, but plan to keep driving southwest or turn back around and go northeast if it's supposed to be cloudy in southern. Drive all night, sleep in a field if we have to.
That's the great thing about this kind of event. You really don't have to be anywhere special once you're in the path. The side of the road is as good of a point as some field where they're charging money to attend. Just look up (with correct viewing glasses of course).
That's exactly what happened at the last eclipse back in 2017. To get to the path of totality, I had to drive on an unpaved forest service road for several miles. Where the road ended there was a big clearing with a bunch of people already there. Fortunately they were very friendly, it was kind of a party atmosphere.
Anyway, it was worth all the trouble. One thing was that I got some great photos of the eclipsed sun. I'm looking forward to the upcoming event in April. I'll be in Mexico where viewing should be good, bad weather being less likely in that region. Hopefully I'll be able to get even better photos this time around.
Countryside roads that normally get very little traffic can quickly get clogged. If you're prepared to sit in your car for a few hours you're good though.
Also no need for glasses during totality. Before totality, you can look at the shape of shadows through a piece of paper with a whole punched in it.
> Countryside roads that normally get very little traffic can quickly get clogged.
Truth. I have a piece of land way out in the sticks here in Mena, AR, and on the rare occasion, our little backroads get very clogged up (think hunting season mostly), though we are right in the path of totality for the eclipse, and the town is even having an "eclipse festival" building up to it.
I'm thankful my wife and I won't have to drive anywhere that day. We're going to hang out in the yard and view it in our little field. Keeping my fingers crossed for nice, clear skies that day. :)
We're going to De Queen (my father-in-law lives there so we have a place to stay) - should be interesting getting out of there. I'm hoping that we're helped by the fact that that corner of Arkansas isn't the "obvious" place for anybody to go. We may just end up staying Monday night but we have reasons to be back to our normal life on Tuesday...
Related problem: How do i convince someone that it's worth traveling 30 hours (by boat) to be in the path of totality? Ideally i need something convincing in German. Thanks for your help!
From what I can figure out this is the longest one that: is on land. In/on a first world country (with a good level of logistical infrastructure) for the next 30-50 years.
There are other ones but the path of totality doesn’t pass completely on land or if it does it passes through Libya or something.
Such a procrastinator's response. Who knows where someone might be in their life in a few years, physically, medically, financially, whatevs. You might put off this to wait for something closer, but then the day of it's cloudy or something. If you have the chance to do it today, go for it. Plus, the more times the merrier.
However, if it's not your thing, then it's not your thing. Nothing anyone says will really change that. But discouraging someone else is kind of an asshat move
By all means, the OP should go. Eclipses are cool!
But they weren't asking if they should go, they were asking how to convince someone else to spend 30 hours travelling for 4 minutes of eclipse. My answer was that they should roll it into a larger trip, to amortize the cost.
I was giving them an opinion on how I'd feel in that person's shoes. And I say this as someone who has travelled for eclipses, and will travel for this one.
Tangentially related... My pet theory is that it was total eclipses that motivated ancient civilizations' evident fascination with astronomy and (by extension!) mathematics.
I live in the path of totality and the city is planning on it being chaos. There are billboards up. Schools are closed for the day. I'm sure every hotel room is booked. And yet, I mentioned it in class the other day and that was the first time one of my students - in college - had heard of it.
I need to be in a city the eclipse is passing over, for a reason unrelated to the eclipse. I can't get a hotel room that night, and I think I will have to drive out of its path for one night. I don't even care about the eclipse but this is so inconvenient and I'm very frustrated.
I’m sure you’ve heard this from everyone, and I don’t mean to minimize your frustration here, but - if you can find a way to see the eclipse, you really should. It’s a uniquely memorable event.
> I don't even care about the eclipse but this is so inconvenient and I'm very frustrated.
If you haven't experienced an eclipse in the arc of totality, and that's where you're already going to be, I would strongly suggest (weather and whatever else permitting) that you drive as close to the centerline as you can, and just park the car and stand there for a few minutes.
It is something everyone should experience if they can.
Okay, yours and the other the comments here convinced me to figure something out, and I've made arrangements. If all goes well I will see the eclipse on Monday. Thanks for your encouragement!
There are plenty of stories you can look up from the 2017 event where people did not consider the traffic. Reviewing some of those might give you a better idea of what to expect for places in the path
There were still seats on a Dallas-to-Cleveland flight out of DFW at 1:14 pm that day as of a few days ago. Probably no window seats, but the entire flight is in the path of totality and if you leave on time, you should be at 10k feet or above when it happens. Unless some seriously big weather intrudes, you will be above the clouds. American Airlines.
We have several cameras on board, including one that points at the sun and one that takes video. It all gets live-streamed to the ground (actually, that's my contribution to the project - the communications system) and sent off to YouTube.
We're launching from New Brunswick, Canada, and we'll be going up to about 30km, or 100k feet. So the clouds definitely won't be an issue for us.