Day 17.089: Eclipse; eclipsed

Today was E5N1's birthday but instead of celebrating our son, we spent most of he day on a mission to celebrate the sun (and the moon). To be fair, E5N1's birthday was already somewhat overshadowed by the five performances of the musical in three days ending yesterday. We'll make it up to him later in the week.

We did manage to start the day with a bit of birthday celebration. Then, having seen E5N1 off to school (we gave him the option to join us instead), we set off to drive north into the path of the eclipse totality. About three and a half hours later we found a parking spot and somewhere to sit by above the Kennebec River just north of Wyman Lake and settled down to wait for the eclipse.

About two hours after we arrived, the eclipse started, the moon taking about an hour to move across from the first bite out of the rim to covering the sun completely.

The partial eclipse progressing

Exile #2 watching with eclipse glasses

The changing light over the river

Totality

Totality

The corona

I didn't see them at the time, but I captured these birds flying through the light of the eclipse

I may write some more about it, but it was a very emotional experience and it's impossible not to think about the people who experienced these events before they knew the science behind it - wild to say the least.

We left soon after the end of the totality, and after a few miles of gridlock (not surprisingly), we made good time and were able to share some food with E5N1 and some partial-eclipse whoopie pies as a makeshift birthday cake.