I saw on the news that ATL was getting 98% occlusion at 2:37pm. I always have mondays off, so I figured good enough, I’ll just step outside around 1pm and suss it out. I did no research into viewing but I hoped 98% might be enough to look at it unaided. I figured I’d pick up some glasses anyway but… I didn’t. So I stepped out at intervals during the afternoon and just gave the sun the briefest of glances, enough to realize I wasn’t going to be able to see jack shit, at least until I was nearer the peak. So, I went in the desk drawer where I for some reason have 7 pairs of sunglasses even though I don’t wear sunglasses and I put them all on at once, shielded the tops and sides with my hands while holding them all together, and gave the briefest of glances at the sun. Hey, neat, this actually works but I can’t do anything but glance since the UV rating is wrong. The sun was still full on my first try but I got to see the onset this way, at intervals.
So I broke out the camera. I used to know a fair bit about analog photography so I had bought a digital camera that is nice-ish. Not an SLR with the gear you need to really shoot this thing, but I tried anyhow. I maxed the aperture but it only gave me f8, then I took the ISO down to lowest: 80. It has a digital exposure dial that gave me 2 more stops down. I had a little rig that allows filter attachments that I’d never used before, but it came with a UV filter, so I slapped that on there. Aimed it at the sky and shot. Big ol’ screen full of light. But then: clouds!
Only problem is it made it look like a lunar eclipse but oh well. The clouds were lucky for photos, but they were mostly too thick to see through, so now was I gonna see anything else? More luck; Before 2pm they all cleared up and I was back to stealing glances through my ridiculous sunglasses rig. So I’m out there on the balcony when my neighbor comes out to look, she has eclipse glasses. She has two pair and would I like to use one? I provided the lawn chairs and we sat in the driveway and chatted. She was the first to notice that the ambient light was getting dimmer. Makes sense, but it was still pretty strange. She remembered a prior partial eclipse she saw that made the tree-leaf shadows go funny. She was right:
after we saw the sunlight turn into a little sliver on the left side of the sun which then dipped to the bottom of the sun, we realized this was the peak but you still could not look directly at it unaided. You could tell the sun was not full but it was still blindingly bright. Then I finally hit on holding the eclipse glasses over the camera lens, but it made the exposure times too long and the light streaked a bit when my hand wiggled.
I wasn’t trying to bust out the tripod and fool with the settings anymore, so i let it go. still kinda neat. Fun times.
