One Day Out & Counting

Actually, about fifteen hours. Totality hits this area about 13:08 CDT.

Forecast for everything along the path of totality from Nebraska to Nashville is summer so-so, filled with convective activity & clouds popping up as the humid summer air heats up. There’s another significant thunderstorm event in the Kansas City area forecast for late tomorrow night and Tuesday morning, but for tomorrow afternoon it’s hit & miss, 30% to 50%+ cloud cover. The best clear spots are in central Tennessee and up in Idaho, both a dozen hours away by car even if there weren’t going to be 10,000,000 people trying to cram into those spots.

It should be a bit better than here if we travel toward NE Kansas and SE Nebraska, so we’ll be headed that way and hoping for the best. We’ll stay off the interstate highways and within the path of totality. (“It’s an adventure!”)

My makeshift solar filter for the big lens is set.

This is more or less the same setup I used a few years back for the Transit of Venus.

I took this picture at about 13:15 this afternoon, the same time that I’ll be taking them tomorrow.  That little solar filter is not optically flat by any means, but I was pleased to see that even with a simple rig like this the photo actually has enough detail to see the large row of sunspots along the equator, right in the middle of the image.

To check and make sure it’s not just a flaw in the cheesy $1 solar filter, I checked to see what the pros saw on the sun at the same time.

Photo: NASA Solar & Heliospheric Observatory

They have more detail – I have more day-glo orange duct tape.

So, off adventuring we go, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow morning. Wish us luck!

Tonight, the sunset from here was definitely above average. I hope it’s a good sign.

One day out and counting…