Total solar eclipse
Austin was inside the zone of totality for yesterday’s total solar eclipse. Even so, we drove to the home of our friends David and Jolyn in Driftwood, where totality lasted a wee bit longer than in Austin, and where we enjoyed good company and good food for the event.
The top picture shows totality. In the second photograph the moving moon had just begun to uncover the sun. I took the bottom picture 43 seconds later.
© 2024 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
Thank you, Steve, for these excellent, out-of-this-world photos of the unique phenomenon!
Joanna
gabychops
April 9, 2024 at 4:54 AM
No way were we going to miss that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, even if the sky here was mostly cloudy.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 5:03 AM
Fabulous photos!!!
Birder's Journey
April 9, 2024 at 5:43 AM
Thanks. The pictures came out reasonably well considering I had no experience photographing an eclipse. “It’s now or never,” and now—which is now then—prevailed.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 5:57 AM
They are really superb – you captured exactly what we all wish we could’ve seen. I kid you not, these could be in National Geographic!!
Birder's Journey
April 9, 2024 at 6:08 AM
Thanks. If I can recast a Jewish saying: from your mouth to National Geographic’s ears.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 6:13 AM
Thank you! We heard on the news tonight that NZ will get to see one in 4 years. Hope the weather holds. I’ve missed seeing eclipses three times because of cloud cover. 😦
Jenny Meadows
April 9, 2024 at 6:03 AM
We had cloud cover, too. Fortunately, as the pictures confirm, the sun was bright enough for its light to make it through the clouds to my camera. I do hope your NZ eclipse in four years is the success you’ll have wanted in as many attempts.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 6:11 AM
Fabulous photos Steve!
Cathy
April 9, 2024 at 6:10 AM
Thanks. I was pleased they came out as well as they did despite any special equipment (like a celestial telescope) or experience photographing an eclipse.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 6:16 AM
Awesome, awesome photography! Thank you for taking the time for such amazing photos!
Anita Westervelt, Rio Grande Valley
Anita Westervelt
April 9, 2024 at 6:34 AM
You’re welcome. It was quite an experience, even with overcast skies.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 7:55 AM
❤️
beth
April 9, 2024 at 7:04 AM
A heartfelt thanks.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 7:56 AM
Great photos. Houston was cloudy.
automatic gardener
April 9, 2024 at 7:08 AM
It was cloudy here, too, but the sunlight was strong enough to penetrate the clouds and let me take some pictures.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 7:56 AM
Outstanding photos, Steve. We had very heavy overcast skies but we enjoyed the once-in-a-lifetime event.
oneowner
April 9, 2024 at 7:12 AM
An event we’ll both remember. We had overcast skies, too, but fortunately not enough to completely obscure what was happening.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 7:58 AM
Great photos. Despite only 96% coverage here, and passing clouds, there were enough breaks in the cloud cover to be able to watch the event. I was as interested in the obvious temperature drop and significantly rising wind that arrived at the peak of our totality. At the same time, all the birds left my feeders en masse and took to the trees.
shoreacres
April 9, 2024 at 7:41 AM
So for you it was a solaravian event. Our friends recently put up a bird feeder but few birds had found it yet; while there we saw one lone hummingbird, and that was before the eclipse. We also experienced a noticeable dip in the temperature and a bit of a breeze, both of which felt good on an otherwise warm and humid afternoon.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 8:04 AM
That’s so cool! Both the images, and that you were there!
circadianreflections
April 9, 2024 at 9:30 AM
April 8, 2024, and I was there—along with millions of other people. As inexperienced as I am in celestial photography, I got managed to get acceptable results.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 9:44 AM
You surely did!! My neighbor traveled to TX in her camper and said where she was it was wall to wall RV’s. It was worth I think for the great views of Totality that y’all had.
circadianreflections
April 9, 2024 at 9:47 AM
Local news warned about possible traffic jams but none appeared that I’m aware of. Perhaps the forecast for cloudy weather here kept at least some people away. It’s raining in Austin now, so if the eclipse were today, we’d be out of luck.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 10:06 AM
I have three girl-friends that went to TX for the eclipse and all three were worried about the clouds. Fortunately, they seemed to have parted for them to get great looks at Totality. You all were lucky indeed!
circadianreflections
April 9, 2024 at 10:20 AM
Yes, we lucked out, though not as much as people in places along the line of totality where the sun shone in a clear sky. But it was enough, and I can’t complain.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 11:47 AM
It was a pretty marvelous event. Fascinating to see the solar flares at totality.
Eliza Waters
April 9, 2024 at 11:07 AM
Totally!
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 11:47 AM
Thanks for the great photos of the eclipse and immediately afterwards. I had taken a short nap after lunch and by the time I got outside, there was a thin crescent showing through the eclipse glasses, which only got larger as time went on. It was cloudy and overcast where I was, so probably could not have gotten any decent photos anyway. Went back inside and enjoyed the vicarious passage through Arkansas and Ohio on the television instead. I’m sure we’ll be seeing plenty of photos of the eclipse in the days to come.
RobertKamper
April 9, 2024 at 11:30 AM
You’re welcome. Where we were was overcast, too, but evidently not enough to stop the sun’s light from making it through to my camera’s large sensor. The 400mm lens magnified what would otherwise have been a small image of the sun, though I still had to crop in a lot afterward. As with many things, you can often get a better look from television than from being present personally; operas and sporting events come to mind.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 12:37 PM
.. not to mention volcano eruptions and war zones and terrorist bombings and warfare in general… places I tend to not want to go to in person.
RobertKamper
April 9, 2024 at 12:42 PM
That sounds healthily prudent.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 12:49 PM
We only had a quarter of the totality. No big deal, it rained all day. Haha!
Peter Klopp
April 9, 2024 at 5:16 PM
Sorry to hear it. You should have come southeast to one of the places in the zone of totality.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 9:35 PM
Thank you for sharing your beautiful captures of the eclipse, Steve. How special to be able to experience this special event right from your doorstep (had you chosen to stay home).
tanjabrittonwriter
April 9, 2024 at 9:00 PM
You’re welcome. Most likely it’ll have been our last chance for a full solar eclipse, so naturally I’m happy to have gotten a few decent pictures—which you’re right that I could’ve gotten from our doorstep had we stayed home. By driving 45 minutes we celebrated the once-in-a-lifetime event with friends.
Steve Schwartzman
April 9, 2024 at 9:38 PM
. . . which only made the special event more special.
tanjabrittonwriter
April 10, 2024 at 11:27 AM
You might say especially special.
Steve Schwartzman
April 10, 2024 at 11:54 AM
Fabulous shots, Steve–really clear and beautiful. We also enjoyed the experience with friends in our neighborhood. During the hour before the eclipse, I popped back and forth between our house and the hostess’ house, as I wanted to observe my Screech Owl and LBJWC’s Athena on the owl cams. I couldn’t see that they responded in anyway, though certainly in my back garden, the birds were quiet at totality. Funnily enough, I was watching Athena and realized that ‘gee, it’s really dark where she is’ and then (duh) I realized I needed to go outside. I was in totality, alone, in my back garden and it was stunning.
We were atop Mary’s Peak in the Oregon Cascades for the 2017 eclipse. It was a truly awesome (a way overused word, but spot-on for what I saw) event. It became colder and windier during the hour or so before totality. Then, as totality approached, the dark raced across the Pacific, the mountains, then us on Mary’s Peak, then moved to cover eastern Oregon–all within minutes. Once the dark consumed the crowd on Mary’s Peak, there was a huge, collective gasp from the hundreds I shared those moments with. I’ll never forget how that felt.
But being alone, in the back garden, mid-afternoon in the dark, was also magical, in its way. The quiet was moving and beautiful.
Tina
April 10, 2024 at 2:19 PM
I’m glad to hear you had such good—and such different—eclipse experiences. Your enthusiasm warrants a “My Gardener Says” post of your own, which I hope you’ll write. A search of your blog just now for “eclipse” didn’t turn up anything, so you could put together a post combining your two experiences. From your comment, the 2017 event is as much with you as the one here two days ago.
Steve Schwartzman
April 10, 2024 at 3:13 PM
Oh wow!!!!!
Cee James
April 10, 2024 at 7:21 PM
You can say that again. It was quite an experience.
Steve Schwartzman
April 11, 2024 at 3:19 AM
Amazing stuff!!
norasphotos4u
April 10, 2024 at 8:44 PM
And just think that for most of human history people had no idea what was happening.
Steve Schwartzman
April 11, 2024 at 3:20 AM
Magnificent photos.
Gallivanta
April 11, 2024 at 4:18 AM
Merci. It was an overcast day here, so we felt fortunate in still getting to see the eclipse.
Steve Schwartzman
April 11, 2024 at 4:46 AM
Heavy cloud cover here in the Finger Lakes. See my blog for more. Wonderful shots, Steve.
MichaelStephenWills
April 13, 2024 at 7:40 AM
Thanks. For a photographer with no eclipse experience I was happy with the results I got. We had a mostly overcast sky here, too, but not so overcast as to preclude getting some pictures of the eclipse. I used my mirrorless camera to avoid the danger of a direct optical image damaging my eye if I looked at the sun through the viewfinder of the DSLR I most often photograph with.
Steve Schwartzman
April 13, 2024 at 8:22 AM
smart — didn’t you use a filter?
MichaelStephenWills
April 13, 2024 at 10:14 AM
No, I figured that during totality I could get away with not using a filter (which I would have had to buy just for the occasion).
Steve Schwartzman
April 14, 2024 at 8:11 AM
True — they say it is “safe” to look directly at a Total Solar eclipse in progress. Happy it worked out so well.
MichaelStephenWills
April 15, 2024 at 6:49 AM
So was I, of course. Unless I go to Spain in three years, this will likely have been my one and only chance to experience and photograph a total solar eclipse.
Steve Schwartzman
April 15, 2024 at 7:44 AM
We’d need to book it today, to get a spot. Big $$$$
MichaelStephenWills
April 15, 2024 at 7:45 AM
Some people paid a lot to come to Texas and other places along the path of totality.
Steve Schwartzman
April 15, 2024 at 8:14 AM
I didn’t want to travel an hour+ to get in the center of the 4/8 totality. As it was, we travelled 1/2 hour and the traffic getting back was outrageous.
MichaelStephenWills
April 15, 2024 at 7:47 AM
Worried about possible traffic, we left for our friends’ place two hours earlier than we’d normally need to. Perhaps surprisingly, we ran into no traffic going there, and just a trifle returning a few hours after the eclipse.
Steve Schwartzman
April 15, 2024 at 8:17 AM
Very glad you were able to see and enjoy this. Our area had something like 85-89% which wasn’t enough to darken the day all that much, but still enough to enjoy the odd and unusual look of the light, very different from a typical overcast day at similar light levels.
Todd Henson
April 14, 2024 at 9:16 AM
I always find it surprising that even a rather small fraction of the sun is enough to light up the day almost to normal. There was no mistaking totality, however, when we experienced it here.
Steve Schwartzman
April 14, 2024 at 9:40 AM
Amazing photos Steve … what a great experience!
Julie@frogpondfarm
April 14, 2024 at 3:03 PM
Yes, once in a lifetime.
Steve Schwartzman
April 14, 2024 at 4:00 PM
Awesome picture! It must have felt amazing to experience such a phenomenon.
Alessandra Chaves
April 15, 2024 at 8:32 PM
Yes, it was a once-in-a-lifetime event. I’m happy, as someone with no experience photographing solar eclipses, not to have messed up my attempt to photograph it.
Steve Schwartzman
April 16, 2024 at 6:02 AM
Marvellous photographs, Steve! And extraordinary to see, I’m sure.
Ann Mackay
April 20, 2024 at 6:04 PM
I’m happy not to have missed the once-in-a-lifetime event (assuming I don’t travel to Spain in three years).
Steve Schwartzman
April 20, 2024 at 9:36 PM