Don't Look Up!

Yesterday, there was a solar eclipse that was visible from San Diego. Well, not a complete solar eclipse, but an annular eclipse where part of the sun is still visible and creates what appears to be a "ring of fire" around the moon.

I was so excited when I found out we would be able to see it. SO excited.


The last solar eclipse that I've seen happened in 1994. I was in elementary school and I remember how awesome I thought it was. All of the classes were released outside to have a "viewing party". One teacher brought a few of her husband's welding masks and we all got to take turns wearing them and staring at the sun. Another trick we learned had to do with shadows. If you poke a hole in one piece of paper and hold another behind it, it'll display the shape of a crescent, which is created by the moon sitting in front of the sun. Awesome.

Anyway.

The Husband's mom came in to town for a night yesterday, so we took her out and then headed down to Ocean Beach to sit and wait for the eclipse to start.

We walked down the pier and I got to play amateur photographer for a bit.

Then finally, it started! I was at first really concerned about the marine layer rolling in, but it turns out, it was helpful. It filtered the sun so I could photograph the eclipse easily and I could stop burning my retinas (I had just been staring directly at the sun trying to see when it was going to start. The story about going blind if you look at an eclipse is an old wive's tail, but staring at the sun is still now a good idea). 

It never actually went full on "ring of fire" here, but that was likely because of the "angle". It was still awesome. 

We eventually had to leave to take my mother in law back to her hotel because she had to be ready to leave by 6 am the next morning, but while we were taking some back roads around OB, we pulled in to a parking lot and I was able to get this shot before the eclipse began to wrap up. 

I'm a bit of a science/space geek, so this was so much fun. 

Did any of you see it?