Total eclipse of the sun

Carbondale, Illinois, outdoors on a hot and sultry day in late August.  Whose idea was this?  And which other person thought it was a good idea?

But it was a good idea in the end.

We made it down I-64 to exit 50 where we turned onto Illinois 127 south and into one of the worst traffic messes of this or any other lifetime.  The first little town just off I-64 was Nashville.  One stop light, no other impediments to traffic.

30 minutes.

About 18 miles to Pinckneyville where in the middle of town Illinois 127 has to divert around a square in the middle of town because they have placed the courthouse in the middle of the road.

30 minutes.

Fairly clear sailing after that until we joined the queue to enter Grass Lot A of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.  They had two or three people working the entrance but were allowing entrance only of a single lane at a time.  One kid stood there with a flag moving the line up to the next kid who was monitoring entrance to the lot.  Some people had to stop to pay.  EVERYONE had to wait while those people paid.  We and most other people had  pre-paid and when we finally got to the front of the queue (after about 45 minutes) we were just waved right in.  The slightest, tiny bit of planning would have had a pay lane and a pre-paid lane (there was plenty of room) which would have made paying in advance an advantage instead of what it was today, nothing at all.  We WERE allowed to  park.

Next was the shuttle bus which was OK although it was just an orange school bus with open windows.  By now temperatures had reached the low 90s with a dew point in the upper 70s.  Hot and sultry, dangerous weather conditions.  Eventually the temperature reached 97 with a 79 dew point.  Dangerous even for the young and fit.

But we got to the stadium OK.  One of the main reasons for buying stadium admission was that NASA certified viewing glasses came free with stadium entrance.  We prepared to go inside.

Did I mention sultry and hot?  And inside under the seating area a pretty much complete absence of even the tiny hint of a breeze available outside.

We got oriented and hydrated and sought out our seats.

A 14,000 seat sell out on aluminum benches with an artificial turf field.

We stayed about 3 minutes, long enough to locate the sun (not hard but it was behind us and too high in the sky to viewed in anything but an uncomfortable twist) and to test our glasses.  The glasses tested to be as good as advertised but those aluminum seats were uncomfortable to the touch and the non grass field wasn't doing anything to help either.  It was just too hot to stay inside.

On the way out one of the vendors volunteered that we could take cardboard from their broken down merchandise boxes if we wished.  We accepted the cardboard and once outside found a tiny bit of almost shade and set up shop.  Here is the fellow traveler with her eclipse glasses, Saluki fans and our water bottles and cardboard.

She is smiling but only because she has been given the UBA and that is the only possible way she knows a photo is occurring.  She CANNOT see me, she cannot see anything other than the sun through those eclipse glasses.

So by that point the moon had started its path across and a tiny corner of the sun was obscured.  We got to half eclipse or so before a bank of clouds rolled in.

The sun is powerful and often you could tell where it was behind the clouds but mostly it was not visible at all for about the next twenty minutes or until just before totality.

And then, perhaps due to the insistent encouragement of the gathered Carbondale Thousands, at just before totality an opening appeared in the clouds exactly where the sun was.

And so we saw it.

Total eclipse of the sun.

Lasting for two minutes and 40 seconds.

There we stood, eclipse glasses off, totally not necessary for this period of the event, staring straight at the black disc of the moon surrounded by the corona of the sun.

Cool.  Very, very cool.  A really good idea.

I had obtained a really good solar filter for my camera but during the early lead up had found it impossible to locate the sun through the filter.

Afterwards I found a chair where I could lean back and take my time.

Successful photograph of the sun starting to reemerge from behind the moon.

So we made it here on time and we saw the show.

On the way home the traffic jam for Pinckneyville started 5 miles outside of town.  It took approximately an hour to get through that town.

Then the single stop light in Nashville took about 45 minutes.

But those are just stories that will become humorous with the passage of time.

We were present for the total eclipse of the sun.  That's two for me in this life time and three if you count the total annular eclipse that we viewed in Utah a couple of years ago.  There's going to be another one here in Carbondale in 2024.  Stay tuned.