By Brendan Loy

Wow! The solar eclipse over Denver was awesome!

Above, a photo that Becky took of me holding 10-month-old Loyabelle in one arm and, in the other, raised above my head, a 13-year-old piece of welder’s glass that made it possible to show the Sun in otherwise normally-exposed pictures. It worked amazingly well. (See also here, here, here and here.)

Below, a shot of the eclipse as seen through a pair of eclipse glasses, followed by a close-up of the eclipse taken by my camcorder (with its makeshift solar filter system, constructed with masking tape and one-half of a pair of those glasses).

These photos were all taken from the west lawn of the Denver Museum of the Nature and Science, which was packed. It was a great place to watch the action, with lots of stuff for the girls to do (like rolling down the hill, chasing bubbles and wandering through the rose gardens), and we even ran into some friends there. But we very nearly didn’t end up there at all!

With the clock ticking toward the eclipse, and the sky looking increasingly overcast, I decided to abandon our museum plan in favor of a long drive south toward Colorado Springs and Pueblo, where the skies looked clearer on the high-resolution visible satellite with ~2 hours to go. So we got on I-225 South and started heading in that direction — but then, with a clearer view of Denver’s western horizon, we could see that there were sunlit skies beyond the clouds, moving toward us, and I made a snap decision that we should go back to the original plan and go to the museum after all. A good thing, too: it looks like the Springs and Pueblo ended up cloudy, while Denver got a great view! We had a cloudy interlude early in the eclipse, but viewing conditions were awesome for the best part of the show, around maximum eclipse.

More photos:

UPDATE: New blog logo!

P.S. After the jump, my Storify page on the eclipse, saving my tweets & retweets for posterity.

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By Brendan Loy

I wrote last night that the only solar eclipse I’ve ever seen was on May 10, 1994, when I caught a brief, unsafe, naked-eye glimpse of the partially eclipsed sun, perhaps 40% or 50% covered, looking out a bus window in Virginia during a school trip. But I belatedly realized that’s not right: I also saw, from the road in the desert of southeastern California, ~20% of the sun eclipsed on December 14, 2001, using a makeshift pinhole to project it from the window of Becky’s Camry onto a notepad as we drove from L.A. to Phoenix:

Hopefully we’ll get a somewhat more dramatic view this evening. Cross your fingers. After crystal-clear blue skies this morning, it’s now partly cloudy.

UPDATE: I found my welder’s glass! Since buying it way back in 1999 ahead of the sunrise eclipse that I couldn’t see due to clouds, I’ve been hauling it around the country for 13 years — and now that I finally need it, last night I couldn’t find it. But I just located it, in a box in the basement:

By Brendan Loy

Tomorrow, America will experience its first annular eclipse since May 10, 1994. Weather permitting, I’ll get to see it as an 85% partial eclipse in Denver — the second solar eclipse I’ve ever witnessed, and the first since (again) May 10, 1994. It will also be the first solar eclipse I’m witnessed safely, with proper eye protection.

On May 10, 1994, I saw the partial phase of that day’s annular eclipse from inside a bus near Historic Jamestowne, VA, catching a glimpse for a split-second with my naked eye — which you should not do, as it’s dangerous. Thankfully, my eyes were not damaged. They could have been!

Why was I on a bus in Virginia, you ask? Well, it was day 2 of the annual Martin Kellogg Middle School seventh-grade class trip to Washington and Williamsburg. I was, uncharacteristically, not tuned in to astronomical events of the day; I don’t think I even knew about the eclipse, or else I had forgotten, until our bus’s lead chaperone, Mr. Spitzer, mentioned it. When he did so, and before he could utter the next sentence (reminding us NOT TO LOOK DIRECTLY AT IT), I instinctively turned my head to the left, looked out the window, glanced up, and saw it. Being an astronomy nerd with knowledge of such things, I knew better than this — but I couldn’t help myself. I immediately looked away, and then blurted out something like, “You’re right, I just saw it!”

This all happened in a split second, and gave Mr. Spitzer the perfect segue into his next sentence, telling everyone NOT TO DO WHAT LOY JUST DID. (In fairness to Mr. Spitzer, I think he actually may have said “now, I don’t want you to look at it, but…” before he even mentioned the eclipse — an admonition I promptly ignored — and then merely reiterated the point after I looked.)

Anyway, I discovered this evening that, down in the basement, in our box of photo albums, inside my Williamsburg Trip Scrapbook (a post-trip homework assignment in Mrs. Weber’s class), there is my account of that day! I had forgotten this even exists. We had to write a little something about each day of the trip, and include photos and whatnot; I went above and beyond, giving each day an extended, detailed write-up, and include a ton of photos, souvenirs, etc. I know you’re shocked. :) Anyway, here’s the relevant part of the May 10 write-up, followed by a relevant photo and, er, illustration.

(Before I go on, a key point of clarification: the “tape recorder” in question is an audio recorder only. You’ll understand why that’s important when you read my write-up.)