It was remarkably non-crowded for a once-in-a-lifetime event. There was still parking available at the regular $7 rate, and lots of space on the beach still open.
There was a generally festive atmosphere as all the people wandered around in their eclipse glasses and enjoyed my favorite beach on Lake Tahoe.
It was everything you could've hoped for in a natural setting, wide open views of the entire Tahoe basin and not a cloud in the sky to the northwest; it was so beautiful I couldn't resist taking this picture and posting it to my Google+ profile with a GPS attached in case anybody wanted to track me down and do a Hangout in Real Life #HIRL.
After filming my intro I looked up and saw that people were already starting to look at the sun through their eclipse glasses. I hastily trucked my camera and tripod over to my filming location and duct taped a piece of #13 welder's glass loaned to me by Alpine Welding over my camera and shot what became this video:
While my HD video camera filmed the eclipse, I took some shots of the crowd and changing light with my cell phone camera
Though it wasn't exactly darkness in broad daylight, the sunlight did dim noticable (to about 25% of normal daylight.
Right at the totality of the eclipse a flock of birds went out circling over the lake, giving everyone an amazing acrobatic show.
Though I explicitly warned my audience in the announcement video that they probably couldn't get a good eclipse picture with their cell phone camera, I couldn't resist trying ot for myself... Not too bad for a cell phone camera, but then again I did make an instructional video on camera phone photography so maybe I'm a little more skilled than most.
By this point the totality of the eclipse was passing and the sunlight starting to return, so I checked my cell phone and noticed that my google+ buddy +Krishna Vinod had left me a message saying he was on the beach, too... So I arranged to interview him and his daughter for the video. He actually found me using the GPS on the picture I posted, marking the first time in years of posting locations anybody ever found me in real life from an internet GPS.
Once I got home, I rushed to photoshop the best still I could out of my video footage... I was amazed by the level of detail my HD camera captured; though I didn't capture a very tight border on the moon, I did get a lot of the sun's corona, including several solar flares... Awesome.
Though a partial eclipse will be visible across the region, Reno, Lake Tahoe, and Pyramid Lake are all directly in the path of the moon's shadow where all of the sun except for a small ring of light will be totally obscured.
Since this is an evening eclipse, the best observing sites will be places with a clear view to the west, like just about anywhere on the east shore of Lake Tahoe or Pyramid lake. The amount of time the sun stays eclipsed will vary across the region depending on where you are. It will last about 2:45 in South Lake Tahoe, 3:55 in Reno and Truckee, and a full 4:30 at the south end of Pyramid Lake where the 3-day Eclipse music festival has been organized arround the astronomical event. Click here for detailed maps of exact times and durations of this eclipse from EclipseMaps.com.
SAFETY FIRST:
Remember, it's never wise to stare into the sun without protection! Even during the totality of a solar eclipse the part of the sun that is visible still puts out enough light to damage your retina after a few minutes. You can protect yourself by buying an eclipse viewerr or set of eclipse glasses from Amazon.com or your local party supply store; if you have a set of welding goggles or a piece of smoked glass that will also offer adiquite protection.
If you must observe an eclipse without proper protection, you can still get a decent view of what the sun is doing by looking DOWN. Put a pinhole in a piece of paper or cardboard and use that pinhole to project an image of the sun's disc onto the ground, and then watch that: the light reflected off the ground is perfectly safe and the resulting image of the sun is much larger and more detailed than what you can see directly by looking up. (This also works for observing sunspots and the upcoming transit of Venus due June 5th.)
PHOTOGRAPHY:
Fair warning, photographing an eclipse is NOT an easy photography task. NEVER point your camera into the sun without a solar filter or you'll fry your CCD because the extreme brightness of the solar disc is just as hazardous to the sensor in your digital camera as it is to your eye. You can get a solar filter for $100-200 at your local camera store or from Amazon.com. -- (I've heard talk that a welding shield will also offer adiquite protection at a much lower price, but I can't confirm this so try it at your own risk only.)
If you want to successfully photograph an eclipse, you must use the manual mode of your camera with exactly the right camera settings and filters or you won't get a usable image. (For full technical details, see Eclipse Chaser's excelent blog on "How to Photograph a Solar Eclipse")
My advice to the non-professional: Don't even bother trying to photograph the eclipse itself with a low resolution pocket camera or camera phone, all you'll get is a blurry dot and a fried sensor. To get a good shot of an eclipse you need an SLR with a long telephoto lens and a good manual mode.
If you don't have the skills and quality of camera to take pictures of the eclipse itself, focus on the crowds, the changing light in the surroundings, or your pinhole projection on the ground; or choose to just enjoy the event itself and save yourself the bother and just rely on the internet to serve you up plenty of pictures later.
