Yes I know the title is self repeating, but this is it. This post is about that day, the main purpose of my eclipse trip, the day of the Great American Eclipse, the TOTAL solar eclipse. Not partial, not annular. TOTAL! I cannot believe it has been slightly over a year since the event as of this writing. There I was, standing there in awe of a spectacle that I thought I could only see in documentaries or YouTube videos.

But, it was not all pretty to get to that moment on that day.

Midnight August 21, 2017

I was in the tent with my other friends, except I was the only one without a sleeping bag. I had severely underestimated how cold it could be at night. I thought having a sweater was sufficient. Boy was I wrong. I was freezing my ass off. It was so bad I started shivering. I thought I was going to slip into hypothermia. I decided to do something about it. So I got up and got to the car, where my other two friends were sleeping. Feeling desperate, I had no choice but to knock on the window to wake my friend up. My intention: try to find something in the trunk that can keep me warm. Luckily he woke up and popped open the trunk. I rummaged around and found my worn clothes from previous days. I gathered the clothes and brought it back to the tent. And so, I started to bury myself under my worn t-shirts, pants, and underpants. To be honest, it did help somewhat. Unfortunately, it was still not warm enough for me to fall asleep. It was one of the most excruciating few hours in recent memory. At some point then, I actually thought I was going to freeze to death there. "Is this it?" I thought to myself. It seems that I have a knack of underestimating low temperatures. Did it in South Korea, did it in Iceland, and now here. Oh well. In the end, I gave up trying to sleep. I got up and walked around. I can't recall now how I actually passed time then, but eventually, it was dawn.

Dawn, August 21, 2017

I was up and about walking around trying to keep warm. Luckily, I now have something to look forward to in the interim: photographing the sunrise. The two friends that were in car also woke up by then, and joined me to catch the sunrise.

Meanwhile, some other folks were also up, lining up for portable toilet.

Here we were at the edge of Solartown at dawn. Sorry for waking you guys up earlier. The soft light during dawn was perfect for portrait photography. I had some fun taking shots of them with my 20mm prime lens.

While facing east waiting for the sunrise, I turned my back. There stood Mount Jefferson in the distance. I was lucky enough to catch the sought after alpenglow. I guess that was the main prize for the three photographers in the distant foreground.I recall I did something similar in the eastern Sierras. Woke up early just to catch the alpenglow. Nice story for another blog post.

And here came the Sun, hours away from the rendezvous with the moon.

Not long after, the others woke up. We packed up early to make a quick exit (or so we planned) right after totality ended. After that, we headed for breakfast, just like everyone else.

Packing up, with my worn clothes strewn around where I suffered.

Luckily, breakfast was available very early. Lining up for food: favorite pastime of folks in the west coast.

Good morning Solartown! Getting all prepped for the big event.

9:06 am, August 21 2017: First Contact.

Back at the campground, we got ready with our gears. My friend VS brought along his stash of eclipse glasses for us to wear.  On my side, I setup the following:
- Canon Rebel T3i DLSR on a tripod fitted with a Tamron 18mm-270mm lens. This was used to photograph close up of the eclipse.
- GoPro HERO 3+ Silver Edition on a GorillaPod. This was used to capture the video of the totality in its entirety.
- Canon PowerShot S110. This was used to photograph/capture any other scene.
Not long after, I could hear screams of excitement in Chinese from the Chinese camp next to ours. (Yeap, there was a whole contingent of Chinese eclipse chasers occupying several plots, all with the same organized tent.) And so there it was, first contact. The moon has begun its passage across the sun slowly.

Getting ready with the eclipse glasses. Never look at the Sun directly without protection!

The moon slowly made its way across the sun. This blurry picture was taken with my point and shoot through my eclipse glasses.

And so we waited for the next hour or so, occasionally glancing up with our eclipse glasses to check out the progress of the moon. In the mean time, we played around with the partial solar eclipse shadow. The idea is if you hold up any object that has a small hole, the light produced through the hole will have a crescent shape due to the partial eclipse (that causes a crescent shaped sun). Normally, this activity is done with a skimmer or sieve that has small holes. Since we did not have one, we had to improvise. The other activity that I missed out on was actually observing the sharpness of the our shadows. Apparently, as the moon obscures the sun, the amount of light that reaches us gets concentrated to an ever decreasing area, reducing to something like a large spotlight. As such, the shadow that it produced was supposed to be sharp instead of diffused. One other thing that I did notice though was the brightness. It did get darker and darker as the eclipse progressed. But it was only near totality when it became really noticeable. It felt as though we were under some kind of tinted awning. It was the same experience I had during the annular solar eclipse. As the eclipse progressed, I became worried more and more clouds started moving in. Fortunately, that did not impact the grand show.

The amount of clouds was a tad worrying.

Eclipse watching the safe way.

Improvising to get nice small holes.

Nice crescent shaped light.

Getting really really close to totality!

Unleashed my GoPro to start recording for the totality.

10:19am, August 21, 2017: TOTALITY! 

As the sky became darker and darker, and the temperature becoming noticeably cooler, my heart started racing. I certainly did not feel sleep deprived at all despite my harrowing night. The occasional shouts of excitement from the crowd became more and more frequent. As the time approached totality, many of us were switching our gazes between the sun and Mount Jefferson back and forth. Most people knew what was coming. The shadow of the moon was scheduled to sweep in from the West, plunging the western horizon into darkness first. That was one of the exciting moments we were looking for in Madras, as we had clear view of the western horizon, including Mount Jefferson. And then it happened.

Mount Jefferson went dark.

The noise level increased. I was getting too excited and unfortunately did not get a good shot of the western horizon. Instead, I took a shaky video with my PowerShot, including with it my excitement that I could not contain.


By that time, my GoPro was already recording. I knew what was coming up next. I grabbed on my DSLR shutter release trigger, all set to fire away taking shots of the eclipse. Yes I know, for first timers, most people recommend AGAINST taking pictures and just enjoy the moment. But I thought, when else would I get this opportunity? Would my memory still be as fresh? So there I went, all ready to snap away. And then it happened.

TOTALITY.

The crowd went wild. Distant fireworks went off. Some jumped in joy. I was like... "oh my god.. wow.... wowwww... woowwwww". There was no need for eclipse glasses anymore. This. This sight. This was something humanity has witnessed throughout its history, across cultures, across continents, but perhaps, with different reactions. Most regard it as a bad omen. To me, it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life. Weird, but beautiful. My first reaction though was that it was weird and surreal. This was something unexpected despite watching it so many times in documentaries. The thing that stuck out to me was this huge round totally black object in the sky replacing the sun, staring down at me. It just felt weird! It was understandable as my brain has never processed anything like that before. And that ghostly corona, my word. It was just something else just to be there witnessing it with my own eyes. The other thing that was unexpected was the color of the sky. It was not total darkness. It was more of the deep to light blue colors of twilight. When going through my pictures, I also captured something unexpected that I could not have seen with my naked eyes: Solar Prominences!

First diamond ring! This was something unplanned for I only noticed this while going through my pictures. That was the last burst of sunlight before totality.

Another unplanned result of the shot: Solar Prominences! It was clearly visible as the bright orange spots in the upper and right limb. I did not notice this until it was pointed by my other friend who saw the same eclipse.

The ghostly corona, the outer most layer of the sun. This was what I saw staring down at me in the sky. Surreal. Absolutely surreal, and beautiful at the same time.

After staring at totality for a while, I then turned my attention to the scenes one can only see during a total solar eclipse:

- 360 degree sunset
- Stars during day time

I was not disappointed. I grabbed my PowerShot and took a video of the horizon. There it was, sunset /sunrise colors all around me.  The clouds earlier on further accentuated the beauty of the colors. And then, there were the stars. First I could spot Venus, the brightest of them all. And then, I started seeing other objects as my eyes adapted. I could totally see now why a total solar eclipse is nothing like an annular eclipse. The obscured sun, the corona, the eerie twilight, the 360 degrees sunset. All these just culminated into an experience like no other.



After around 2 minutes as predicted, it was time for the moon to move on. The sky slowly became brighter and then BAM! A second diamond ring, a parting gift from the moon to mark an end to totality. The crowd cheered again, some applauded. It has been one hell of a show. It was time to put on our eclipse glasses again. And with that tiny slit of exposed sun, it was daylight again.

Final diamond ring as the moon gave way to the sun, marking an end to totality.

Increased exposure of the same diamond ring. I was pretty pleased with the effect.

2 minutes 5 seconds.

That was how long totality lasted in Solartown, Madras. Short it was, but it was a 2 minutes that I hope I will never forget. Luckily for me, the video from my GoPro captured most of the essence of that period around totality:



My favorite part of the video is always the part where the light from the sun slowly shrink to a dot as totality approached. Always a joy to watch it as people went crazy over it.

Shortly after totality ended, two of my friends had to run to beat the traffic. They had parked their car further away from the campground, and they had to drive back to Seattle to catch a flight back to the east coast on the same day. Unfortunately for them, most people had the same idea. And not long after, a traffic jam built up at the exit. Me and my friends followed suite no long after. By that time, my excitement had worn off, and the tiredness started to wear in. I hopped in the back seat, and crashed. Occasionally I would wake up and snap some pictures of the jam, and then doze off again, all the way back to Portland. I am forever thankful to my traveling buddies. Without them, this trip would not have been possible, and certainly would not have been this fun.

Traffic jam exiting Solartown

Heavy traffic heading back to Portland.

And so that was it. Mission accomplished! My bucket list item #2 checked!

If I were to compare between my top 2 bucket list items, the auroras and the total solar eclipse, I would say the auroras felt like a graceful symphony, while the solar eclipse felt like heavy metal. The auroras felt graceful, dancing around, with short bursts of activity. On the other hand, the solar eclipse was short, but came in and out with a bang. It felt like an in your face kind of awesomeness. I just feel glad and fortunate enough to be able to witness both, and I hope more people get the chance to witness nature's wonders in person.

After the event, I checked out other people's videos too, and boy were they amazing. To close this chapter, here are some of my favorites: