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!
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