Our Eclipse Experience! - and a Cool video from a NASA space instrument

Rob's pic of about 5%

Since we both work at NASA, we had the special eclipse glasses so we could witness the Partial Solar Eclipse on Monday, August 21 in Maryland. It was about 80% totality (that means that sun was about 80% totally covered by the moon).

This is how it the eclipse looked from Maryland

   It was a very busy day at NASA, and there were over 1,400 people at the Visitor's Center, and literally hundreds of employees on the open grassy areas watching the eclipse. The 80% totality occurred at 2:43 p.m. EDT.
   Tom was busy with meetings but he did manage to walk out of his office and stand in his parking lot to look up. When I asked him about his experience he said "I'm glad I didn't have to drive 500 miles." LOL. That's Tom

This was soon after it started

It was variably cloudy...

   I was busy in the office and took a 5 minute look outside at 1:30pm EDT, which was about 2 hours after it started (it ended by 4:01 p.m. when the sun was 100% visible again). I made sure I went out at 2:43 p.m. for a couple of minutes and looked up through the glasses. I also took a couple of pictures with the cell phone, holding the glasses up in front of the lens. They didn't come out so good, so I provided photos from professional photographers here. I thought it was pretty cool. 
  Of course, when I was watching the shadow of the moon move across the Earth, my eyes kept getting drawn to the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Hurricane Kenneth, because I had just written an update about the storm. So, yes, the eclipse was cool! But I still think Hurricanes are cooler! :) Once a meteorologist, always a meteorologist I guess.
   Anyway, if you missed out, you now have 7 YEARS to find eclipse glasses!     Another total solar eclipse will be visible in the United States on April 8, 2024.

Traveling a different path from the 2017 eclipse, the total eclipse will be visible in Mexico, the central US and east Canada, with a partial eclipse visible across North and Central America.

More about how NASA studies eclipses: www.nasa.gov/eclipse
VIDEO:   NASA's EPIC View of 2017 Eclipse Across America
 From a million miles out in space, NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) captured 12 natural color images of the moon’s shadow crossing over North America on Aug. 21, 2017.  EPIC is aboard NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), where it photographs the full sunlit side of Earth every day, giving it a unique view of total solar eclipses.
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/pm7tfLvHmXA
 

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