My first total eclipse experience
I saw a total solar eclipse for the first time on August 21, 2017. Before that date, I had seen a few, cloud-impaired views of partial solar eclipses and I once viewed an annular eclipse using a welder’s mask. I had also seen quite a few lunar eclipses. However, that August experience completely blew me away. Starting the trip
Early in the morning of August 21, 2017, I packed my wife, and my adult son, and my adult daughter into the Land Rover for what I felt would be the last ever summer trip for our nuclear family. We drove to a small town in South Carolina called Newberry. I picked Newberry from a map I found here that showed the town to be reasonably close to the center of the eclipse path. On the way back home, I announced that our eclipse expedition was the best summer vacation trip ever!
Newberry SC
It turns out that Newberrians really know how to host an eclipse party. The 2017 eclipse was not their first rodeo. The town had previously hosted a total eclipse event on May 28, 1900. Among other things, Newberry businesses offered free eclipse viewing glasses and put on a complete weekend festival with food, crafts, t-shirts, skits primarily aimed at your children. In short, the town of Newberry was a complete weekend festival. While we missed much of the festival because we arrived early Monday morning, there was still plenty to see.
The eclipse itself was spectacular. I had considered myself an astronomy buff before the trip, but my view of the sun and the corona, and the darkened sky at totality was completely awesome. None of the narratives I had read, and none of the YouTube videos I had watched, prepared compared to being there and seeing the eclipse in person with the people I loved most in the world.
Returning Home
Upon my return home to North Carolina, I could hardly stop talking about my eclipse experience. I remember having a job interview for an MCAT tutoring position shortly after I came back. For my interview, I was required to prepare and deliver a brief lesson on a subject of my choosing. Given that freedom, I elected to explain why you had to be in just the right places to see a total eclipse without using any astronomical terms. I did land the job. I am sure my enthusiasm for the subject was obvious.
Eclipse Planner the App
I had been working on a sky map application at the time of my eclipse trip. The purpose of that application was to display the objects of the night sky for any time and date, and any place in the world. A minor feature of the app was providing a display of solar and lunar eclipses. Unfortunately, I had gotten my sky map application into a bad developer’s cycle in which I came up with new features to implement faster than I could complete the ones already on my to-do list. I was not sure that I would ever complete the sky map app. After my eclipse trip, I was inspired to remove the eclipse module from the still-unnamed and unfinished sky map app and to make the eclipse module its own separate application. Hurray! I finally finished something! Eclipse Planner is the name of that application, and you can find it in Apple’s app store. I am currently testing the Android version of the application and hope to announce it shortly.Eclipse Planner the website
There are lots of great eclipse websites out there, and I will certainly link to them. However, it is my goal to make this site the essential eclipse planning site. Some of the text here was written right after my eclipse visit of 2017 while I was planning an upcoming expedition to see the April 2024 total eclipse. Almost everything here is still under construction. There are eclipse maps, but they do not yet display local circumstances so that users can see what is available anywhere in the world. The Eclipse Planner apps page is still empty, and there are only a few blog posts.