On account of the Memorial Day holiday, AIP Matters will not be distributed on Monday, May 28. Instead, we share with you Kevin Marvel's eye-witness account of an important cosmic event.
 

All eyes on the Moon

I viewed the annular eclipse on May 20 from Mt. Wilson, a 9000 foot peak in southeast Nevada. A well-graded dirt road goes all the way to the summit for maintenance of an FAA navigation beacon and microwave relay stations. We had cool temperatures (in contrast to the 90 degree heat of the valleys, we were in the 60s), light winds and tremendous solitude. The images here are the point of third-contact, when angularity begins, two shots from before third contact showing a sunspot about to get covered by the disk of the Moon, and a quick shot during the partial phase and showing the basin and range geography that dominates Nevada. I held a welders glass roughly half-way across my lens, after adjusting exposure on the mountains below. As we approached angularity, the temperatures dropped substantially.