Hey Eyewirers!
We obviously have a lot of players in North America, and the event of a lifetime is coming up on Monday, August 21st: the Great North American Eclipse! This will include the first total solar eclipse visible in the United States since 1979. It’s going to be a pretty awesome event in general: the eclipse will sweep all the way from the Pacific Northwest to the Carolinas, traversing the entire continent. Although solar eclipses take place about every 18 months, it can be decades or centuries for an eclipse to happen in exactly the same city or region.
Whether you live in the path of totality, you’re traveling there, or you’re going to be in an area with partial coverage, feel free to share your photos and experiences in this thread! Heck, if you don’t get to take your own photos, but you find some other cool ones, you can also link to them with proper attribution here. (Please don’t directly upload someone else’s images without permission.) And do note that some places outside the US, including as far as Iceland, Ireland, and the northern UK, will have partial eclipse visibility too! As for myself, I’m going to be in South Carolina, squarely within the totality zone, and I hope to get some great photos because astronomy is amazing.
Obligatory safety warning: Except for the moment of totality (100% coverage of the sun by the moon), never ever ever look at the sun directly unless you are wearing viewing glasses certified to meet the ISO 12312-2 international safety standard (there’s a good list of brands here to make sure you’ve gotten something real). If you look at the sun through a camera, only look through a digital display, do not use the viewfinder lens! Staring directly at the sun can and will cause blindness or other severe vision damage. The moment of totality is only safe because the sun’s corona is too weak.