I Watched The April 2024 Solar Eclipse!

On Monday 8th April, 2024, I witnessed an incredible thing: a total solar eclipse. There are no words for this experience, and yet in this article, I’ll find them and describe just how amazing it was! I also recorded a vlog narrating my live experiences watching the solar eclipse!

The last time there was a total solar eclipse visible from North America, it was 2017. I was in New Zealand at the time, so I missed out. I consoled myself with the fact that the next solar eclipse was in 2024 – 7 years later – and that I’d make sure not to miss it that time.

Fast-forward to 2024, the time has come for the solar eclipse, and the path of 100% totality is at minimum a 6-hour drive from where I live in Virginia, and at most 11 hours (if I wanted to go all the way up to Maine or Vermont). There was no way I was going to miss totality this time, so I convinced my family to make the arduous journey to see 100% totality. Virginia was going to see 88% totality, which isn’t the same, and for the price of a relatively short road trip, why not see 100% totality?

Planning the trip

After consulting this useful map of the solar eclipse path, we decided to go to Cleveland, Ohio for three reasons: 1. to see the solar eclipse at 100% totality, 2. to visit our family friends who live there, and 3. to check off Ohio as another state I’ve visited on my world travel map.

In preparation for this trip, I ordered this 10-pack of eclipse viewing glasses from Amazon to share with everyone we’d be viewing with. We didn’t have to book any flights or hotels, since we were driving and staying with our family friends, but we did have to plan for traffic carefully. This is because anywhere from 1-3 million people would be traveling to see the eclipse, in addition to the 31 million people who already live in the path of totality. We decided to drive from VA to OH on Saturday 6th, and return back on Tuesday 9th.

Watching the solar eclipse

On the morning of Monday 8th, it was totally clouded over! I was nervous that maybe we wouldn’t be able to see totality after all, but miraculously the clouds cleared up around 11am and stayed that way! Our family friends took us to a nearby park to watch the eclipse, and interestingly there wasn’t a lot of traffic on the roads, nor a lot of people at the park! Thank goodness for quiet suburbs.

We set up shop in a corner of the park, and I set up my tripod and phone, ready to take photos of the eclipse when it started. However, seeing my phone just sit there on the tripod doing nothing made me think, why not narrate my experiences during the eclipse? And so I started vlogging my solar eclipse experience! I edited it into a vlog.

In Cleveland, these were the key eclipse-viewing times:

• Eclipse started at 1.59pm.
• Totality started at 3.13pm.
• Maximum was at 3.15pm.
• Totality ended at 3.17pm.
• Eclipse ended at 4.29pm.

It was incredible seeing the moon slowly eclipse the sun from the bottom-right corner, moving up to the top-left corner.

As it was getting closer to totality, it was getting colder and darker, because the moon was blocking the path of light from the sun. This is obviously what usually happens every day when the sun sets, but seeing it happen in the middle of the day was a little jarring! In fact, it got so cold that I wanted to put on a sweater, even though it was previously about 70 degrees Fahrenheit (~21 degrees Celsius).

As the Moon started eclipsing the Sun closer to 100% during totality, I saw the famous diamond ring effect, but did not see Baily’s Beads due to low-quality eclipse glasses. I also saw a ‘red dot’ at the bottom of the sun, which I later learned was actually a solar prominence, a magnetized loop of plasma on the Sun’s surface! I also saw Jupiter and Venus emerge around the Sun during totality, now that they weren’t being dimmed by the brightness of the Sun!

During totality, the surrounding sky looked like a sunset sky, with the Sun’s remaining light being reflected in the clouds opposite, like how I point out in my vlog (at 15:37). The geese in the park got very confused and started squawking and flying like crazy, which goes to show how animals are also affected by the eclipse.

Just before totality, I noted in my vlog that my surroundings started appearing grey-ish to me (at 12:50 in the vlog). This was because of the Purkinje effect, where the rod and cone cells in our eyes are adapting to the change in light intensity! This article by sciencenews.org describes this effect during eclipses.

Eventually totality ended, and the darkness started receding. I continued observing the Moon’s shadow leave the Sun, but now in the opposite direction that it had approached. As I reflected on the experience, I realized that nothing could compare to the feeling of being in totality. It was a very unique experience, and I truly understand why people become eclipse-hunters – I know I would do anything to experience totality again!

Reflections

Nothing holds a candle to totality.

At 20:57 in my vlog, I said the above quote when attempting to describe my experience during totality. It was truly a life-changing experience, which really made me contemplate how lucky we are to experience such a fantastical cosmic phenomenon. I did some research on the orbital mechanics that needed to occur for this solar eclipse to happen, and it truly astounds me.

Now that the solar eclipse is over, we all have to go on with our mundane lives. But we can hope to see another eclipse like this one soon. There are a few annular and partial eclipses from now to 2026. The next total solar eclipses will be across Europe in Aug. 2026, northern Africa in 2027, and Australia and New Zealand in 2028. There’s a lot of opportunities if you missed out this time or if it was cloudy!

At the start of my vlog, I raise the question if it was worth driving 6 hours just for a chance to see the eclipse. I answer that question now: yes, it absolutely was. It truly was the experience of a lifetime. I must thank my family for going along with my craziness and driving us up to Ohio, and I am especially most grateful to our family friends, who very kindly hosted us, and took us to see sunset over Lake Erie, and took us to a prime viewing location for the eclipse. <3

Here’s to the next solar eclipse!