Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

We knew seeing the eclipse would be a close thing.  We members of the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society had a full day of events.  It started with a full day at Northwestern Michigan College at their annual fund raising Barbecue.  Gary and Eileen Carlisle, Ron and Jan Uthe, Richard Kuschell, and myself had telescopes aimed at the sun.  Joe Brooks our meteor man was holding forth in one of the classrooms with his meteorite collection.  This went from 10 a.m. setup to 5 p.m. take down.

I immediately headed 30 miles westward to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive and the Lake Michigan Overlook and our planned eclipse viewing party with the park rangers.  The rest of our group except Joe followed a bit later.  The sky was milky all day, and we had puffy clouds in Traverse City at the barbecue.  Watching the cloud animations on weatherunderground.com gave me some hope that the cloud bank we knew was over Wisconsin might just hold off so we could get the major part of what we projected would be the first 50 minutes of the eclipse before sunset.  There was also a spear of thunderstorms coming northward up the lake from the south.  The sky was so milky that we had no idea how high the cloud bank we knew was there actually was.

When I arrived at the entrance to the scenic drive the rangers told me that they may change our location due to blowing sand.  When I got to the overlook the sand was indeed being blown by gusts of wind coming from the southwest.

Lake Michigan Overlook Looking South

The above picture is from my scouting trip the week before.  We set up near that dune, which sheltered us pretty well from the wind.  However when I got home, I was full of sand, especially my hair.

It wasn’t until about 10 minutes before the start of the eclipse that the cloud bank was revealed.  It then was a race between the moon and the cloud bank.  The moon won by about 5 minutes.  My old friend John Russell, a professional photographer, was there and has posted an eclipse image on his Facebook page.

About 10 minutes later we found that the clouds were getting ugly, and approaching rapidly.

Looking in vain for the sun.  Isn’t that a thunderhead on the left?

That was it for the eclipse.  The rangers counted about 200 people who attended.

Gary Carlisle with binoculars and Richard Kuschell look for Venus above the cloud bank.

Gary Carlisle, who has a knack for finding planets in twilight, spotted Venus above the cloud bank and pointed his Celestron 8 telescope toward it.  Richard Kuschell located it too with his 4″ refractor to give the folks remaining a bonus view of the thin crescent of Venus.

We then packed up and headed back home with lightning to the south and a smattering of rain.