The event called The Great American Eclipse lived up to its billing on August 21. Here in Georgia, the total solar eclipse cut a narrow path through the northeastern part of the state before heading out to sea off the Atlantic coast. The last time a solar eclipse was visible in the South was in 1984, when a spectacular annular eclipse traveled diagonally from Louisiana to the Chesapeake Bay. My article about that event, Sunshow in the Southland, appeared in the September 1984 edition of Astronomy.

Flash forward nearly a third of a century. My wife, Joy, and I traveled from our home in Athens to the small northeast Georgia town of Toccoa, where totality would last for 1 minute and 59 seconds. In 1984, the annular eclipse was at its maximum for only 9 fleeting seconds. It was a brief but amazing cosmic event that was but a preview of this year's total eclipse of the Sun.

Toccoa is a charming town of about 8500 people that hosted an influx of eclipse viewers on August 21. Traffic jams plagued many of the roads in Georgia on eclipse day, but the highways to Toccoa were clear. Townspeople and out-of-town eclipse chasers waited patiently for the big event, which local businesses and civic groups touted as Totally Toccoa Eclipse 2017.

When I viewed the May 30, 1984, annular eclipse from the tiny hamlet of Maysville, Georgia, the weather that day was crisp and the sky was clear perfect eclipse weather. In Toccoa on August 21, the weather was hot as the Sun performed its disappearing act but the sky was once again clear and blue.

During the 1984 annular eclipse, I viewed the event with a projection plate attached to a 2.4-inch refracting telescope. Baily's Beads, caused by sunlight peeking through lunar mountains and valleys, were visible, as was the planet Venus in the briefly darkened face of the Sun. The celestial show was even better on August 21. The unaided eye could take in the whole performance during the moments of totality.

See the rest here:

A tale of two eclipses - Astronomy Magazine