A-L-E-X, there is the Danjon Scale for lunar eclipse brightnesses, with L=0 indicating a very dark or nearly invisible Moon during mid-totality.  Apparently the December 1982 eclipse ranked L=0 by many observers, following the eruption of El Chichón.   I also found some photographs of it on Mr. Eclipse's site.  It was very dark, indeed!

I find it surprising that it would look darker than the sky to the eye though.  Unlike the solar eclipse, it isn't surrounded by a bright corona.  Earthshine wouldn't be a factor, either.  Maybe it has something to do with the red color of the moon against a different color of sky background, so it tricks the eye with color instead of light intensity?

I've synchronised by videos.  I'll eventually edit the footage from the entire trip into something, but for now this composition:

[youtube]y1RPzK4-z1c[/youtube]
EDIT: Argh.  A heads up from YouTube:

    A copyright owner using Content ID claimed some material in       
    your video.                                                       
                                                                      
    This is just a heads up                                           
    Don’t worry. You’re not in trouble and your account standing      
    is not affected by this.                                          
                                                                      
    There are either ads running on your video, with the revenue      
    going to the copyright owner, or the copyright owner is           
    receiving stats about your video’s views.                         
                                                                      
    * Video title: Total solar eclipse. Madras, OR. Uncut.            
    * Copyrighted content: Total Eclipse Of The Heart                 
    * Claimed by: SME                                                 

Because somebody is playing music in the background?  Give me a break...

A-L-E-X, there is the Danjon Scale for lunar eclipse brightnesses, with L=0 indicating a very dark or nearly invisible Moon during mid-totality.  Apparently the December 1982 eclipse ranked L=0 by many observers, following the eruption of El Chichón.   I also found some photographs of it on Mr. Eclipse's site.  It was very dark, indeed!

► Show Spoiler

I find it surprising that it would look darker than the sky to the eye though.  Unlike the solar eclipse, it isn't surrounded by a bright corona.  Earthshine wouldn't be a factor, either.  Maybe it has something to do with the red color of the moon against a different color of sky background, so it tricks the eye with color instead of light intensity?

Thanks, Wat!  I think it looking darker than the sky here is a function of the light pollution levels on western Long island.  I was only 9 years old at the time so I have a very dim memory of it, but what I do remember was that I could not see the moon from my window and I had to go outside to see it because it was so dark.
Did you find the one from July 1981 that was so bright?

I've synchronised by videos.  I'll eventually edit the footage from the entire trip into something, but for now this composition:

[youtube]y1RPzK4-z1c[/youtube]
EDIT: Argh.  A heads up from YouTube:

    A copyright owner using Content ID claimed some material in       
    your video.                                                       
                                                                      
    This is just a heads up                                           
    Don’t worry. You’re not in trouble and your account standing      
    is not affected by this.                                          
                                                                      
    There are either ads running on your video, with the revenue      
    going to the copyright owner, or the copyright owner is           
    receiving stats about your video’s views.                         
                                                                      
    * Video title: Total solar eclipse. Madras, OR. Uncut.            
    * Copyrighted content: Total Eclipse Of The Heart                 
    * Claimed by: SME                                                 

Because somebody is playing music in the background?  Give me a break...

LOL that's awesome- the copyright police are back.  Corporatism at its "finest."

Next big event around here is this eclipse:  Jan 20, 2019.

https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/ ... o=20190121

Sorry, the total lunar eclipses I was talking about (one very bright and one very dim) were both in the same year!  How often does that happen (and them both being visible from the same location?)

Wat, when did that eruption of El Chichon happen?  Because I remember the July 1982 eclipse was very bright orange and the December 1982 eclipse was very dim!

https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/ ... o=19820706

That's the very bright one from July 1982.

This agrees well with my memory of seeing the eclipse around 3:30 am from Brooklyn.

https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/ ... o=19821230

There's the very dim one from December 1982.

This agrees well with my memory of seeing the moon in the Northern sky.

hmmm for whatever reason I don't remember and didn't see this solar eclipse

https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/ ... o=19840530

May 30, 1984

Because somebody is playing music in the background?  Give me a break...

I know.... copyright stuff with youtube has gotten beyond stupid.  Excellent video, anyways.  It was really neat watching Mt. Jefferson vanish, and then stand out darkly against the twilight during totality.  Glad you got that footage to the west.


Now that we're more than a week after the eclipse I figure it's a good time to share videos.  Here are some of the prettiest or most interesting one's I've found so far:

Pretty good video of shadowbands on the ground (not even on a tarp, and they weren't expecting it or knew what it was) in Nebraska.  Shadowbands start at around 5:15 with a bunch of "Whoa's!" from the group.  They're visible again after totality, too.

Very good quality, wide angle view of landscape and clear sky during totality in Wyoming.

Another nice view of the shadow sweeping across the Cascade Volcanoes, from Smith Rock Park in Oregon.

Wingsuit formation during totality at Madras.  We saw these guys on chutes at the end of totality from our observing area.

Drone footage of Solartown (Madras) at sunrise.  Midtskogen and I were somewhere behind and left of the hot air balloon at 1:40.  Drones were supposed to be banned from the area but a couple people flew them up anyway...

Close up view of a "graze", where the viewer is right on the edge of the totality path.  Totality is very brief if you get it at all, but the upside is you get an extremely long-lasting diamond ring and Bailey's Beads.  The effect is beautiful.

Another graze video, this time a wider view of the sky.  Skip to about 2 minutes in.

And finally one of the more amusing ones I've seen yet.  Driving around in the middle of a city during totality while everything comes to a halt and everyone stares up for 2 minutes. :P

It's normal stuff with Youtube, they were bought by Google.  Google (like Apple and Microsoft) doesn't care about violating privacy at every level with tracker ads and spyware (let's be honest the government is just as guilty and does even worse) but when it comes to copyright they stomp on regular folks like us.  This is what happens when corporate cancers buy up everything in sight- the monopoly of megacompanies which we see in every facet of life from media to telecommunications to corporate-funded "science" to politics and beyond.  Skype was bought by Microsoft and next thing you know the NSA had a backdoor into it.  No coincidence.

Wat, where do you find such awesome stuff? I look around on various sites but it's hard to find.

By the way, back to SE for a sec, Wat, does the LandOn function for landing at a specific lat/long not work with the "e" patch?

APOD has a picture of earth from the LRO spacecraft around the moon, during the eclipse.

By the way, back to SE for a sec, Wat, does the LandOn function for landing at a specific lat/long not work with the "e" patch?

The function is called LandTo, not LandOn !

By the way, back to SE for a sec, Wat, does the LandOn function for landing at a specific lat/long not work with the "e" patch?

The function is called LandTo, not LandOn !

haha i mistyped it here, but I had it as LandTo in the console, I figured out what I did wrong, I had commas separating the different fields  Thanks Jack!
Is there anyway to increase the saturation of the stars- I want blue stars to appear bluer and red stars redder even at wide FOVs.

Wow, there are some issues with the patch.  I no longer see clouds in the sky (the sky is perfectly blue which never happened before) and the rippling effect of waves on the water is gone!  The land is also a dull tan color, with no solar reflection at all.  Are these the texture issues with the patch that people were talking about?

Also, I inputed LandTo 40.634 -73.708 5 and got this instead

40d38m02.39s

40.634

-73d43m15.72s

-73.721

The lat is spot on but the long is off (and this was a problem pre-patch too.)

I've put together a video from my trip to Madras showing a bit of the journey and the situation in Solartown.  We got up around 4am on the 20th and checked in at sunset in Solartown, just in time to pitch the tents before dark.  The driving was from California relatively smooth, except the check-in for Solartown which took three hours.  It was said that they had an online system for checking the validity of the tickets, but with tens of thousand people pouring into the area the network broke down.  By the time we were finally let in, they had stopped checking the tickets.

We jumped into the car shortly after the totality, drove 25 metres and didn't move at all for an hour.  Eventually we could slowly move out of Solartown.  It was somewhat chaotic, and the car behind us even managed to crash into our rear bumper.  After four hours, through many backroads, we were finally out of the totality zone, but traffic was heavy and slow far into California until midnight.  Some drama on I-5 also: a van not far ahead of us caught fire, and was soon engulfed in an explosive fire, the two in the car apparently escaping to safety rescuing a few belongings only.  We almost drove through the flames in 40 mph and the heat was immense.  The incident may have closed I-5, which would have been bad if we had been a bit later (those two people in the van had a much worse day, though).  Finally, close to 02:30, I was back at my hotel and managed to get some sleep before getting up again at 07:00 to get to Google in Mountain View in time for meetings starting 08:00.  We were done at 20:00 that day.

[youtube]SHyWw6mPApg[/youtube]

"Oh, come on.  Was that 2 minutes you stupid Sun?"  LOL, exactly how I felt, followed by yelling into the sky "DO IT AGAIN!"

Great video.  It was an ordeal getting out, but worth every minute of it.