On Mon, 21 Aug 2017 19:57:04 -0500, Ignoramus22488
wrote:

My 16 year old watched eclipse with his science class.

I picked up my 11 year old from school 20 minutes before the top of
the eclipse. We drove home and watched using shade 10 Omni-View
welding lenses with gold colored tint.

It was partly cloudy. Clouds, in fact, helped more than they hurt
because you could photograph the eclipsed sun easily. When the sun was
out, it was great to use shade 10 lenses, overall it was a great
experience.

In my town, the sun was eclipsed approximately by 90 percent. Despite
that, it was not dark, at its worst it was dim, like under a heavy
cloud cover. That dimness was, however, noticeable.

http://igor.chudov.com/tmp/eclipse.jpg

Shade 14 glasses that the school gave my 16 year old, were way too dim
and he could barely see anything.

Overall everyone had a great experience, except the 11 year old got
sick with flu or some such.

i

We rented a motor home and drove to Missouri, stopping at a lake in
Oklahoma on the way to and back. Just got home yesterday afternoon. I
had a couple pair welding goggles with #14 shades, and a solar filter
on my 11" telescope. Captured pictures on both sides, but lost
tracking when I yanked the filter off at totality. Grabbed the camera
off the scope and stuck on the telephoto.

The corona was very visible, and through the telephoto, I saw a big
solar flare. It was pink. The whole thing was fascinating, even
though like a chinese fire drill. The next one in 2024 will pass
within 100 miles of here. I'll watch if I'm able. And I'll bring a
good camera telephoto setup with a right angle view finder for
totality. Or if it's any shorter maybe I'll just watch, maybe with
binocs.

The photos were good, but the sunspots were not sharp due to high
cloud cover we were looking through. Earlier, I had the scope set up
for visual observation, and the sun spots were fascinating with
apparently black centers and fringes sort of like the iris of an eye.
The whole thing's a crap shoot with the weather, but we did ok.

Pete Keillor

Pete Keillor