My wife and I drove about 80 miles northwest from our home to be closer to the center of the totality path. Where we were, totality lasted about 2 minutes. I did not take my solar scope as that would have required taking a lot of equipment and my scope isn't capable of taking a full disk image. I wanted to experience the eclipse instead of spending the time looking at a computer screen and making adjustments. It was quite an experience. We got to observe the drop in temperature (Approximately 10° F.), the ellipses on the ground in the shadow of a nearby tree ( The small patches of light that the gaps in the leaves provide act as pin hole cameras and every patch is a partial image of the crescent sun a the moon.). The lighting was strange as totality came on and even stranger as totality started to decrease. The heat of the sun on my bare arms was replaced with a cool feeling. The lighting at times resembled sun light through a very smoky sky and at times the contrast between light and dark in the world around me took on strange variations. There were some cows grazing in a field beside our location and during totality they stopped grazing and laid down.
We had solar glasses to observe the sun directly and I did take a couple pictures with my Canon XSI. Below are pictures of the corona at totality. It was a great experience and one that I thought I would never have in my life time.
Bill
The moon started to cover the sun from the 1:00 position angling across the sun down and to the left. there was the diamond flash as totality started and ended. When any of the sun wasn't covered the light was too much for my camera so I only have these 2 very similar pictures of totality. This is 2 more pictures then I intended to take. :-)
