Company's flying me into Atlanta to film the eclipse from their quarry for social media. I have like 0 idea of how to do that and don't really have the proper lenses either. And it's not like I get a do-over... but internet research has been kind of fruitless. I guess I'll buy some polarisers, lock everything on manual on 3 cameras and and roll video hoping nothing fucks up. It's like a 99% eclipse at the quarry so I figured it won't get super dark. After that, straight to burning man! And then I'll rent a car and drive around Cali for about a week for more photos of memorials. A hectic couple weeks ahead, but I'm loving it.
https://www.cloudynights.com/forum/135-north-american-total-solar-eclipse-2017/ There are a dozen or more good threads on how, why, when what etc in that forum. 99%!??!?!?!?!??!?! FUCK!! you are going to miss the good stuff, and now I'm a bit mad. The sky will get dark, but not quite dark enough to see the full corona. You will get to see the shadow of the moon race toward and away from you. You will see Venus, certainly, but it will not get dark enough to see stars. Depending on where exactly you are and what exactly "99%" is, you should see a ripple of Bailey's Beads across the limb of the sun and weird shadow phenomena on the ground. It will also get cooler than it was at the start, you will see the "shadow bands" as the sun goes from a disk to a point source of light and trees will cast interesting odd shadows. Bring a colander with you and get a picture of the hundreds of little crescents! And remember even at 99% you should use eye protection, solar glasses, #14 welder's glass etc. I assume you already know that but the NASA training is beaten into me at this point. Get as far north on the site as you can. http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2017_GoogleMapFull.html Find exactly where you will be and get the times of all the events so you can plan accordingly. Have fun, get some good shots and if you can, share them!
I KNOW! I'M SO CLOSE! But they want shots including their quarry so i'm stuck at the 99% zone... Still pretty dope they're flying me in for that. I've never seen even a partial eclipse before. Not ever a lunar one. We ordered some glasses for everyone too. I'm actually planning to punch holes in a poster in the shape of the company's logo and project half-moons into the marble inside the quarry. I tried explaining how awesome that is but I'm not so good at explaining. Hopefully they'll understand what I meant when I make the video. They were asking me WHY the shadows will be half-moons and I was like... cause pinhole photography? Physics? Thanks for the link - I knew you'll have the insider information forums! I'll be in a city called Tate in Georgia - north of Atlanta. Out of the path of totality by a few miles :(
Ah, a question I can answer! The sun is not a point source of light. It acts like a uniform disk of light in the sky. This is why on a normal sunny day your shadows are, for lack of a better word, soft. A diffuser sort of, but not exactly, does this as well; it takes the light from a point source, aka light bulb, and spreads it out a bit. The little pin holes mirror the sun's disk on the object that the light is projected on. As long as the sun is a disk, that image will be round. As the moon move in front of the sun, you see less and less of a disk and more of a crescent. Now, the light from the sun is still not a point source of light, but it is also not a perfect disk either. The shadows on the ground reflect the change in the shape of the sun as the eclipse progresses. One of the things that I intend on documenting is when shadows stop being soft and start having hard edges. (My guess is at 75% covered but we will see.) If you have a square light source, by the way, and use a pinhole projector? The image looks more square than round. Here is a picture that shows rather than explains. Yea you are maybe 10 miles from the fun stuff. We get to do this again in six and a half years so use this as the excuse to whet the appetite for a total eclipse. Still a bummer, but when work is paying the bills you gotta do what they want you to do, right? And just because I had it up already for some other sites I looked at the NWS report for Tate. Thunderstorms and 30% chance of rain on the day of. Prepare an out for your gear in case of rain. Hopefully you get to dodge the rain and get some great pictures.They were asking me WHY the shadows will be half-moons and I was like... cause pinhole photography? Physics?
Everyone in that outer, perumbra, shadow will see a partial eclipse. Only in the that cone of shadow, the umbra, is the eclipse total.I'll be in a city called Tate in Georgia - north of Atlanta. Out of the path of totality by a few miles :(
Yeah it rains on and off every day over there - but hopefully the skies will clear up at the moment of the eclipse. Would be a bit of a bummer if not. Thanks for the explanation - I understand a lot better now :) Have fun on your own eclipse adventure!