For technical info go to the NASA website


30 minutes First contact - The Moon begins to cover the Sun. Over the next 15 minutes the blue sky becomes a bit duller, and the landscape begins to look "metallic" as it enters a twilight state.
15 minutes The western sky is darker than the eastern sky, and color is turning to violet. Spaces between leaves in trees act as pinhole cameras to make hundreds of little crescents under the trees.
5 minutes A dark storm-looking form is building in the west, but with no sounds. The dark form moves upward until an orange twilight is revealed beneath it. You are looking underneath the Moon's shadow as it approaches at close to 1000 miles per hour.
2 minutes The Sun looks like a blazing silver-white crescent. On the ground the rapid flickering of the shadow-bands can be seen. These are the result of the sparkling of the crescent Sun in the lower turbulence of the atmosphere. They shimmer at an ever more rapid pace as totality approaches, as the turbulence from the upper atmosphere begins to participate. They resemble the shadows of a huge flock of butterflies flying in formation in front of the Sun.
A few seconds The crescent Sun breaks into a curving string of shiny dots called "Bailey's Beads." These are the last rays of sunlight shining along the bottoms of the deepest valleys of the Moon. The dots flicker on and off and change position by the half-second as different valleys move into position finally covering the Sun.
1 second before Only one shining dot remains - the "diamond ring" effect - as the Sun vanishes in the middle of the day. Animals have been making twilight sounds and at this point, go to sleep, sometimes right where they stand. Nocturnal animals come alive. Every reaction in nature says that it is now nighttime, and the whole world around you starts to rapidly cool down - sometimes by as much as 20 degrees or more.
Totality At our Eclipse Base this lasts 32.9 seconds.  Where the Sun once shined in the sky, there is a black disc - the Moon - covering the Sun completely. You are engulfed in darkness but there is a golden glow all around the horizon. Surrounding the dark Moon is the Sun's corona, observable only during a total solar eclipse. It is a shimmering opal-satin with streamers flowing outward, and resembles the white of a huge eye with the Moon appearing as the eyeball in the middle. It is the outer atmosphere of the Sun shining at over a million degrees! Scarlet prominences - giant clouds of gas many times the size of the entire Earth - can be seen swirling out from the edge of the Sun, twisting and looping off the surface at thousands of miles per hour.

Stars and planets will be clearly seen. Jupiter 5° away, Mercury 9° away, Saturn 23° away from the Sun/Moon. Orion, Gemini, and Taurus will become visible near the Sun, and six of the seven Borana calendar stars/star-groups will appear-Sirius, Saiph, Orion's Sword, Belletrix, the Pleiades, and Aldebarran around the "eye" of totality (Beta Triangulum will be below the horizon). Alpha Hydra will be at the zenith. The temperature will continue to drop as an extreme quiet   pervades the atmosphere, as if a sub-conscious noise one had heard constantly had suddenly been turned off. You are standing in the shadow of the Moon.

Among many other things, this direct fit has allowed us to test the Theory of Relativity upon which our whole idea of the universe is built. Yet the Moon has not always exactly fit over the Sun. This is a recent phenomenon because the Moon has been moving away from the Earth at about one inch per year. This exact fit has only taken place during the last few ten-thousand years, and in another few ten-thousand years the Moon will no longer be able to completely cover the Sun and the last total eclipse possible will have gone. In the history of species on the Earth we do  indeed, live in a privileged age.
1 to 120 seconds
 Looking up at the Moon, there seems to be a tiny explosion at one point, but at an incredibly rapid rate it grows to engulf you! It is the diamond ring effect in reverse. Shadow bands shimmer all around you on the ground. The stars and planets blink out. You are surrounded by an explosion of light. The world, like a tremendously huge machine, begins to start-up again.

Looking to the east the shadow of the Moon can be seen racing off at about 1000 miles per hour across the hills and over the horizon. The shadow bands slow in their shimmering and then fade. The animals start to get up; some making morning sounds, and the warmth of the sunshine and bustle of life on Earth is back.

You have been one of the privileged few people to ever experience a few moments in the shadow of the Moon, and to have seen the Sun's atmosphere. It is an awe-inspiring demonstration of the precision of the Earth's and Moon's orbits that cannot be influenced in any way by all of humankind's technology. You have connected with the universe today, and we guarantee that you will never be the same again. But be warned, the very next words after "Wow!" are almost always "When and where is the next one!"