What's your thoughts about this total Solar eclipse?

[Nevander]

Coincidentally, Google searches containing "eyes hurt" spiked during the 21st.

Out of curiosity where do you find this information?

[Caligari87]

It looks like it was a mis-represented interpretation of a Google Trends chart. See this article for more.

[Ethril]

I didn't have a chance to enjoy it. Too busy fending off friggin' vampires and swamp things and giant moths.

[Jaxxoon R]

It looks like it was a mis-represented interpretation of a Google Trends chart. See this article for more.

All the article says is the term "eyes hurt" didn't spike as much in proportion to "solar eclipse" as that particular graph made it seem (personally haven't seen that graph before this article; just the one with "eyes hurt" on its own).

[Trance]

I watched it from atop a stone viewing tower at the summit of Wayah Bald, a member of the Appalachian mountain range in the Nantahala National Forest west of Franklin, NC. Elevation: 5,300 feet, its gravel road a 5 mile hike. Painful, exhausting, but worth every arduous step. My focus of attention was not the sun, but the landscape around me. I wanted to be high up so that I could see the moon's shadow approaching from a distance.

When the umbra got to me, it was traveling across the Earth's surface at about 1,500 miles per hour, and it was 60 miles across. The brightness change in the minutes leading up to totality was so gradual I barely noticed the change. The sun's heat slowly left my skin, and something just seemed... off about the way everything was lit. It looked like mid-evening, shortly before sunset, but with high noon shadows. Slightly reminiscent of the color filters old Hollywood would use to film a night scene during the day.

The circumstances of my viewing location meant that no wild animals were around to freak out prior to totality; no birds or noisy insects or any other audible creature lived near the summit. All you could hear were human beings and, occasionally, their dogs. There were dozens of pet dogs brought up to the top of Wayah Bald, and only one made any noise during the event, and even then only briefly. They generally seemed to be cool with it, if slightly perplexed as to why all these people were so excited.

I kept my focus westward, keyed for a visual on the umbra. Just above the horizon, the clouds at the edge of visibility turned pink. They were soon joined by more clouds of reddish and orange hues, and the mountains in the distance darkened. Dusk was coming for us at breakneck speed.

Then it happened. It was like the sun itself was on a dimmer switch, and someone somewhere grabbed hold of it and dialed it down before our very eyes. The cheers and shouts built to a crescendo as the sun overhead faded into a wispy outline of its former self. As I glanced upward and saw it, even though I knew exactly what I would see and exactly why I was seeing it, the reasoning center of my brain couldn't prevent a brief shudder of apprehension shooting through me. I was seeing something which Earth has played host to for billions of years, yet it felt so alien and foreboding in that first moment I looked at it. The sun was gone, its hollow imprint the only sign that it had ever been there. Immediately, I understood why ancient civilizations panicked at the sight of it. Lacking the knowledge of celestial mechanics to comfort and reassure them, everything about it screamed "portent of doom by an angry god".

I looked around. The red bands of dusk ringed the entire horizon now. The world was bathed in twilight, and the lights of a neighboring town cut on automatically. Two tiny dots in the sky appeared not far from the glowing ring. These were of course Venus and Mercury, freshly visible now that they had no more photonic clutter to hide behind. A hush fell over the crowd as their minds absorbed the spectacle above them. I wonder how many of those people had experienced the same momentary twinge of primal fear that I did.

Two minutes passed in a handful of seconds, and another burst of cheers and unchecked joy erupted on top of the mountain as a brilliant jewel popped out of the side of the ring, signaling the end of totality. Daylight was restored, high-fives were passed around, and shortly afterward came the process of breaking down camera setups, pulling up tent stakes, and filtering back into cars. On the way back, many people marveled at the pinhole effect created by the forest canopy above the road, casting thousands of images of the now-partial eclipse for our convenient viewing.

---

It was an experience I've wanted to have for most of my life, and it's one that will be stamped into my memory for as long as those brain cells live. No video or picture I've ever seen does the event justice. If you missed totality, start working now on getting your life to a state where you can catch the next US total eclipse in 2024. It is a sight unlike anything else the Earth has to offer. See at least one of these while you're alive.

[Wiw]

I think nothing, we didn't get it in this area.

[phantombeta]

People on Reddit (including the OP) are saying this photo accurately depicts what the eclipse looked like.
That's beautiful.
I wish I lived in the US and could have seen it. ;-;

[Trance]

If you were looking through a telescope at it, it might've looked like that. Using your Mark I Eyeball, the sun was about the size of a blueberry held at arm's length. There wasn't much detail to make out apart from three wispy protrusions coming off the ring. All the strands visible in that photo were not apparent without magnification.

If you can make it down to Argentina or (preferably) Chile in two years, there's another total solar eclipse coming up in 2019, and those two countries exclusively will see totality. They'll be lucky enough to get another one the following year.

[Caligari87]

Yeah, it's a lot smaller in the sky than it looks there, but generally the same. I personally was able to make out a lot of detail on the flares, but it might have been due to exceptionally clear skies and a relatively high elevation.

This picture does capture more-or-less what it looked like in the sky, although foreground/landscape should only be about half as bright.

Either way, it's absolutely beautiful.

[Redead-ITA]

In italy i didn't get much to see like 13% i suppose
but i think it was cool

[Freaklore1]