Yesterday I along with  neikrad headed off to the wilds of solar viewing. We were carefully watching the weather reports and chose Bloomington Indiana first with possible Carbondale Illinois a close second.

We started off at 3:30 AM cause I remember the utter nightmare the State of Illinois was with Orange barrel season and snails pace bumper to bumper traffic heading south. We left early to give us a buffer. Once we got off the 74, we instead drove towards Indianapolis, which was well within the 'sweet spot range'. We hit the area around 9AM!! Traffic was not as bad as we had feared. So we hit a White Castle since we had plenty of time. And plotted our escape route when the event ended.

We scoped out various areas that were suitable, then chose a public park that was rapidly filling with eclipse watchers. Everyone around us were in great moods as I set up my tripod and unfolded the chairs. Most of the plates on the cars came from Illinois, one other from Wisconsin and one from Florida. They literally took a day to drive up.

There was a small pond nearby as it was also invaded by Canada Geese, Some kids were approaching the geese and I warned the kids with their parents "Don't approach the Canadian Hissing Cobras, they are highly venomous and can strip the flesh off a cow in a few minutes, a small child would be gobbled up quickly!" The kids looked horrified, the parents smirked.

I had previously spent $16 on a 6 inch square of solar filter for my cameras and made covers for the lenses (I also didn't want to spend $36 for a dedicated, use likely only once solar lens cover for my camera either.) Turns out I wasted $16, they didn't work for shit.

Then the action started, everyone was looking up with their Eclipse glasses, and we all watched in awe as it unfolded before us. Then at 90% coverage, realizing the filters were useless, I ripped them off my three cameras I brought. And shot the first image via the lens of my solar glasses. Wasn't sure it worked or not. Then the full umbra, the corona happened. Lots of cheers erupted. I was quickly snapping photos between my two regular cameras. One gave me grief, insisting I use the flash, then insisting I recharge the flash, back and forth between cameras. The video camera I had focused for the Umbra, I stupidly failed to hit record. I and a few others viewed a red object at roughly the 3 o'clock position a short distance away from the sun. We all questioned it. (Sadly didn't show up on the SD card when I reviewed.)

And then it was quickly over, again, much cheering and some idiot shooting off fireworks. We quickly loaded the car and bailed out via our planned escape route home. Avoiding a massive amount of parking lot snails pace traffic. Outside some on the 57 and 74 in Illinois. We got back at 9:10PM, I did the driving going in and most to Illinois back, then James drove til we got to the 39 North and I drove the rest of the way back.

I'm damn glad I to witness this first hand again, and better yet, without the traffic nightmare of 2017.

The top left image was one minute before Umbra, the bottom right, the second the 'diamond ring' started.

Thanks to  marmelmm for cobbling the images for me.