The Texas Eclipse Festival did not end as planned, organizers cancelled
the event for weather risk reasons, although in the end the weather was
so much better than forecast (forecast said we'd never see the sun at
all and it would rain).
When I heard about the cancellation on a thread fo bar one of my 2 cell
phones,while barely awake, I managed to tear up camp and start driving
out in just 15mn and got out of the festival in just over 45mn, before
traffic got really bad. I then realized I had just enough time to drive
my friend Marc Antoine's ranch 50mn away, and the fact that 2 lane roads
in TX have 70mph speed limits, sure helped. I got to his place 30mn
before totality.
It did not rain, and the sun came out just at the right time for the
eclipse and went hiding in the clouds soon after. Timing was perfect.
And I happened to capture some solar flares and mercury with my not so
great handheld camera, so I'm happy :)
When I got out of the festival, partial eclipse hadn't started yet, but the sun was barely visible
Marc sent me the GPS location of his ranch, and GPS said I could barely make it and thankfully the roads were near empty
I pulled over a few times when the sun was visible for barely a minute
Most of the time, it was fully overcast, as per the forecast
but the sun came back out a few times
And in barely 50mn I made it to Marc's ranch and got to meet his family. We had just seen one another 2 weeks prior at beyond wonderland
all ready
fun thing is you can see a partial eclipse without glasses
getting there, so close
and yes!
even a decent shot frmo my cell
it got dark :)
I caught some sun flares on this one
on lower right, I think I you can see mercury. Einstein used it the lensing effect of gravity in his theory of general relativity
my best lucky shot!
and way too soon, it was over already :)
and the sun soon went to hide under clouds again, perfect timing!
The eclipse festival didn't end well, but the eclipse itself went way beyond expectations!
Video:
