We viewed this eclipse from St. Albans Bay, Vermont, on the shore of Lake Champlain. Our main concern was the weather, because long-term weather records showed about a 70% chance of clouds for this date in April. As it turned out, there were high thin clouds over most of the sky, but the eclipse was still a very dramatic event, and we were able to observe it all the way from first contact to last contact.

During the first half of the eclipse, the thin clouds produced a beautiful halo around the Sun. As totality approach, we saw the Moon's shadow on the distant clouds across the lake, moving toward us from the southwest. It looked like an approaching thunderstorm, except that is was traveling much faster (over 2000 miles an hour, in fact)!

During totality, we were treated to a great view of the Sun's corona despite the clouds, and there were some amazing red prominences visible on the rim of the Sun. One V-shaped prominence of the lower right rim was especially vivid, even without binoculars.

This was my second total solar eclipse (the first was in Stayton Oregon in August 2017). The sequence of images begins at the upper left and ends at the lower right.

The rollover image below shows the beginning and end of totality, which lasted 3 minutes 33 seconds.

Image details: Canon T6i camera with a 200 mm lens at f/5.6, ISO 400. Partrial phases through a solar filter.

April 8, 2024