As Dad said, viewing a partial eclipse is kind of like your first New Year’s Eve. When it is all over, you say, “Is that all there is?” The build-up is far more exciting than the actual event.
We started watching NASA coverage at noon and had that on the whole time, although we frequently lost the signal – probably lots of people on the internet at the same time. Still, there were some beautiful pictures on there. When it got close – at about 2:10, we went outside and just observed the change in the surroundings. To me, it was like wearing sunglasses – everything was just a bit muted and sort of blueish. There was no reflection of the sun off normally shiny things, but there was still light and shadow on the ground. Of course, we were not in the path of totality, and if this taught me anything it is that even a small amount of sunlight is very, very bright. And the change in temperature was very noticeable. It was quite a warm day, so we probably dropped a good 10 degrees for about a half hour or so.
Dad set up a contraption with a mirror, a pin hole in cardboard and a white paper taped to the chicken pen. The only problem was that he had to go and adjust it about every 5 minutes, because the darn sun kept moving! He took a few pictures when we were as close to totality as we were going to get.
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