
Astronomers-for-a-day gasped and cheered as the much-ballyhooed Great American Eclipse rolled across the nation. Millions more took a break from work to peer at the partial eclipse visible everywhere in the U.S. Weather posed few problems for sky gazers, although it rained in parts of Missouri and was cloudy in much of South Carolina as the partial eclipse grew closer to totality. The skies above Charleston, S.C., the last major city in the path of totality, opened up just enough for stellar views of the eclipse, even as a thunderstorm moved in from the north, providing wild bolts of lightning. Ref. USAToday.
From our location we only saw the moon cover about 70% of the sun but it was still very interesting to watch and makes you reflect on how extremely small we are in the universe.
How scientists used NASA data to predict the corona of the Aug. 21 Total Solar Eclipse. When the total solar eclipse swept across the United States on Aug. 21, 2017, NASA satellites captured a diverse set of images from space. But days before the eclipse, some NASA satellites also enabled scientists to predict what the corona -- the Sun's outer atmosphere -- would look like during the eclipse, from the ground. In addition to offering a case study to test our predictive abilities, the predictions also enabled some eclipse scientists to choose their study targets in advance. Source 7l.