Am I the Only One Glad When the Eclipse is Over?

[azure]

We only had like 60% coverage here in AZ but I found it to be very underwhelming

Same here. But, we had a chance to do a big outreach event, and the turnout (and reaction from the public) was amazing. So all in all, a success.

But oh yeah, if I coulda, I woulda been in the totality zone.

 

[Jay Honeck]

As my wife said, "Any excuse to fly is a good one!"

If y'all think a few minutes of abnormal darkness is worth flying toward, well, by golly, it's all good!

Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

 

[exncsurfer]

As my wife said, "Any excuse to fly is a good one!"

If y'all think a few minutes of abnormal darkness is worth flying toward, well, by golly, it's all good!

Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

And the crazy black hole sun with the fiery ring around it!

 

[Pilawt]

We only had like 60% coverage here in AZ but I found it to be very underwhelming

So much for our wimpy little 63 percenter here in PHX.

I drove 20 miles out to the hangar Monday morning, intending to at least get some airborne pix of the local desert scenery in the muted eclipse light. But a flat nose strut oleo had other ideas.

I got the airplane to a mechanic and high-tailed it back home, and hauled my camera gear up to the 15th floor rooftop of our condo building. There was a buttermilk-sky kind of broken cloud layer, which turned out to give some interest to what would otherwise have been boring photos.

 

[Matthew]

My morning sports radio guy said the clouds obscured his view of totality. He said he finally realized why his wife had started calling him "Eclipse", as in, "Hey, Eclipse! Dinner's ready!" You have this great sense of anticipation all day, it's over in 2 minutes, and you're disappointed.

 

[SoCal RV Flyer]

Still, Asteroid Smackdown would be waaaayyy cooler.

Wait, there's another one in just 7 years? Wow, start preparing NOW!

To rate it on a scale of 10 - my feeling
non-totality eclipse, even 99% - a 2.
Flying into FFA - 5.
Totality - 6.
Grand Canyon - 10.

I'm with you. To me, the Totality was just Sunblock SPF 10,000. Every day, the sun completely disappears from view as the earth rotates!! Pretty neat.

To add to your list:

Contemplating black holes, dark matter, pillars of Creation nebula, formation of stars and planets, red giants and supernovae, and basically the formation of the entire universe - 50!!!!!

 

[denverpilot]

I bet the controller quoted in this article was happy it was all over...

"There are MILLIONS of you!"

https://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Mostly-Orderly-GA-Onslaught-in-Oregon-229527-1.html

 

[olasek]

I was in a total eclipse once. I honestly didn't think it was that big a deal. It was still light, although a bit dark, as though it were cloudy

Not my experience, it was actually very dark, not midnight-dark since some daylight was 'leaking' on the horizon but it definitely wasn't comparable to a very "cloudy day", not even close, makes me suspect you weren't in the totality. It was in fact so dark you could not drive a car without headlights on or you wouldn't see a thing. And this leakage of daylight on the horizon made you realize it wasn't an ordinary 'night'. It was actually an amazing experience and worth my 1200+ miles trip. Watching eruptions on the Sun through the binoculars added to the effect. But you need a good weather or things will be far less spectacular.

Even 99% is not impressive. Unless you saw totality where the sun went out, and the sky went dark, and the corona was clear as day to the naked eye, you didn't see it. A partial is a curiosity. A total is something entirely different.

This is a very wise statement