Total Solar Eclipse at Huntington, OR : August 19-22, 2017

Saturday, August 19 : Madras Recon

My plan was to fly into Pendleton, OR on Saturday and decide whether to fly into Madras on Sunday or drive down I-84 towards totality near Idaho. Smoke from wildfires seemed to blanket Northern California up to Central Oregon, but it cleared up just north of Bend.

Smoke and haze approaching Lake County Airport (Lakeview OR)	Bend Airport is down there somewhere	US 97 between Bend and Redmond wasn't very busy	The Milli Fire, just south of Sisters was throwing up a huge plume of smoke.
pIMG_0366.JPG	I thought this was just a small fire just south of the airport, but I found out later a plane had crashed here :(	Looking back at the smoke plume from over Madras	pIMG_0405.JPG
pIMG_0410.JPG	pIMG_0411.JPG	pIMG_0416.JPG	The Madras eclipse tent city

Sunday, August 20 : Huntington High School

Although some friends who flew into Madras said conditions were fine, I was still concerned about the smoke in the area and a lack of mobility once on the ground there, so I hit the road and wound up in the town of Huntington, Oregon, population 440. I camped out on the football field at Huntington High School.

The National Guard was out at some of the larger camps.	pIMG_3910.JPG	cIMG_3913.JPG	A beautiful sunset!
pIMG_0488.JPG	Dawn approaches	cIMG_0512.JPG	cIMG_0546.JPG

Monday, August 21 : 44°17'39"N 117°14'17"W

The high school was in a bowl that limited visibility of the horizon, and I thought the few street lights in town might prove annoying, so I relocated a short way south along the highway for the eclipse.

Looking towards the Snake River Valley	Farewell Bend State Park and I-84 in the background	Civil Air Patrol flew by a couple times	Just before totality. Shadow bands were visible on the road, but didn't photograph
7 minutes after totality, and everybody's leaving...	Partial eclipse has ended. Back to being a normal day.	pIMG_3961.JPG	Just north of Baker City on I-84
Huntington had a custom postmark (top) vs the special USPS one (bottom)	The stamp is thermally sensitive and changes when warm

Eclipse sequence

As for the eclipse... Wow. I'd read about the various effects as totality approached - the cooling of the air, the shimmering of the shadow bands on the ground, the diamond ring just prior to totality. It was quite something to see and feel all of that happening, mostly in the few minutes just before totality. And totality itself: the sky remained a little brighter than I expected - a dark deep blue, the greyish white of the corona, and then a dark black hole in the sky where the sun should be. Simply incredible! Neither words nor pictures do justice to the spectacle. The area sat in eerie twilight for the predicted couple of minutes, and then the diamond ring appeared again and light returned to the land.

An animated gif of the eclipse sequence

All times in UTC.

16:09:08	16:10:15 First contact (slight dent at 1 o'clock position)	16:14:49	16:20:19
16:30:33	16:40:26	16:51:35	17:01:20
17:11:58	17:21:25	17:24:19	17:24:43 Diamond ring effect
17:24:50 Bailey's Beads	17:24:53 Totality!	17:25:07 A wispy corona	17:25:37
17:25:45 A wider view of the corona. Regulus is visible to lower left	17:26:12	17:26:24 A couple nice prominences	17:26:56 Chromosphere visible just before end of totality
17:27:02	17:27:06	17:27:08	17:29:10
17:37:56	17:43:13	17:59:12	18:14:02
18:29:36	18:38:17	18:47:53 Last contact

Wide angle sequence

Frame grabs from a video. The camera was set to a fixed exposure so it didn't try to adjust for the increasing darkness. It gives a sense of the dynamic range of an eclipse... or the lack of dynamic range of a camera. It didn't actually look pitch dark to the eye, but it got pretty dim. I was told the streetlights in town came on before it even got to totality.

An animated gif of the sequence

17:21:11	17:21:41	17:22:11	17:22:41
17:23:11	17:23:41	17:24:11	17:24:41
17:25:11	17:25:41	17:26:11	17:26:41
17:27:11	17:27:41	17:28:11	17:28:41
17:29:11	17:29:41	17:30:11	17:30:41
17:31:11

Tuesday, August 22 : Heading home

I never sleep well in a tent, and having a train yard operating through the night while anticipating a solar eclipse didn't help. I spent the night in Pendleton and headed home the next day. I took a detour to overfly Huntington, and got to dodge some thunderstorms in the Nevada desert.

My eclipse viewing site	Huntington, Oregon	Hazy day. Glad it wasn't like this yesterday.	Thunderstorms north of Tonopah
cIMG_4039.JPG