I like eclipses, and over the years I’ve seen quite a few. The first one I saw was in 1963 and I viewed it from the back stoop of my father’s apartment. Eastman Kodak had sent employees home with sheets of exposed film to allow for safe viewing and I stood out there and watched the sun move in and out of the clouds, marveling in my little 3rd-grade brain about how cool it was. It wasn’t a total eclipse for Rochester, but it was close as its path transited from Alaska, across Canada, and out to sea from New England.

Jump forward to 2009 and the total eclipse that sailed across China while I was working in Dalian. On that day we all left our desks and went outside onto the employee deck to watch it sail by.

We’ve seen a few annular eclipses here in New Mexico in the last 15 years and I always try to photograph them. While the moon is not identical in size to the sun, and you don’t get to see the corona, an annular eclipse still presents an amazing image. This past October, the alignment was 100% right over the house.

We’ve also had a partial eclipse or two, including the 2017 version that gave us about 75% coverage, on a day with clouds rolling across the sun.

The Big 2024 Eclipse presented an interesting challenge for me. Only one state away, I considered what it would take to see it in full totality. My first thought was to drive down to El Paso (3 hours away) and then head across Texas early in the morning to see totality somewhere in the countryside. The problem was, it was still another 9 hours to get to the sweet spot which seemed impossible. It was just too far away. The other option – straight out of Albuquerque to Tulsa meant a 12-hour drive that also seemed impossible. The calculus just didn’t work, especially given the jet lag I had from my European adventure that had ended only 3 days prior. So the decision was made – I’d take the 77% I could see from the backyard.

Of course, it was cloudy on eclipse day morning but I brought out the camera and set it up on the tripod. I’d done some preliminary test shots the day before – when it was sunny – and now I had to redo them given the conditions. I didn’t bother setting up the telescope since the viewing was not going to be all that great.

We spent the full 2-1/2 hours outside allowing me to take a photo every 5 minutes providing me plenty of raw material to package into a photo sequence. The worst part – the clouds made it tough to get similar photos from minute to minute. The best part – MLW and I had a nice Eclipse Picnic.

Here’s the sequence, not bad most of the time, but the clouds did make their presence known –

Given the cloud cover, we didn’t see much darkening, even at the maximum. Nor did we get those cool little mini-eclipse shadows on the ground that you normally see as the rays of the sun pass through the foliage of the trees. I took the photos, and by 1:45, it was all done. I have no regrets about my decision – there’s another one across the US in 20 years. I’ll just wait.

We did feel a noticeable drop in the temperature, and this graph pulled from my weather station shows that it was about 2 degrees during the time of the most coverage.

And finally, a little stop-action “video” made from a handful of still shots.