Too funny. My neighbour is doing the same thing, won't let her 10-year-old kid or newly acquired puppy outside today, at all. Says they will go blind. I told my wife and daughters to go out on the front lawn around the peak of the eclipse, roll around the ground in a frenzy with arms and legs flailing and covering eyes, moaning and cry about the sun burning them up. You know, for laughs. we get on well with those neighbours and I think they'd be able to laugh about it. anyway, wife and kids went up to some park to watch with the astronomy club so that fun is out. I'm at work, surrounded by nerds (okay scientists, and I count myself as one) so pretty soon I expect most of the staff to be outside in the parking lots. But we will only get to see a 70% eclipse. Looks like we'll be in the path of totality for the next one though.

For those who _were_ allowed out today, hope it was a magical experience.

Nebraska sand hills was an awesome place to view (its an awesome place even without an eclipse). Clouds were a bit dicey. fog didn't burn off til about 11AM, then thick grey ones rolled in about a half hour after totality. Really blind luck that we got to see it clearly; hope everyone else had similar luck.

For those who _were_ allowed out today, hope it was a magical experience.

Yes, it was most magical. We saw crescent shadows before totality and stars during. Could not believe how awesome it was. We shared the event with family and friends at our house. We commented on how cool (temp) it was getting as the moon continued to cover the sun. The aura was incredible...something cameras could not fully capture. Our photos did show Bailey's Beads, however. I will never forget it.

The assisted living facility hosted a party on the roof and they had eclipse glasses for everybody. She went to the party but refused to look at the eclipse because her dumba** son had her too scared.

She went to the party but refused to look at the eclipse because her dumba** son had her too scared.

Has ANYONE found ANYTHING ANYWHERE documenting fake eclipse viewing glasses? I'm started to feel this was all some fake news story or modern urban legend like the big Halloween candy scare.

PI Joe

The moron BIL probably hadn't ever heard about fake eclipse glasses. It's more likely he was warning that the eclipse was a sign of Gawd's wrath raining down on sinners or some such nonsense. And his mom, who isn't much stronger in the grey matter department, thought there might be something to that.

According to snopes.com, there were bogus/defective glasses out there.

http://www.snopes.com/quick-guide-2017-total-solar-eclipse/

Worth a read if you like some good eclipse humor based on some of the other idiotic things some people apparently believed.

I bought a set of eclipse glasses before the bogus eclipse glasses story came out, and later got some from one of the companies listed by NASA as being reputable. There was a big difference between the two. The first set I got, you could see ordinary lights through it, with the second set only the sun was visible through it. No I don't know for sure that using the first set would have caused any problems, but I wasn't going to risk it.

dp

Actually, the glasses we got from you, which were on the list of approved glasses, if you put them on and look at an unshaded light bulb, you can see the filament. Nothing else in the room, but you can see the light bulb's filament, even through the white paint that makes it a "soft white" bulb.

It's pretty cool. Seeing the eclipse through them was also pretty cool. Well, beyond "pretty cool". I set my dvr to record local eclipse coverage while I was gone to Idaho to watch the thing, and everyplace they had remote broadcasts from they also had cloudy or partly cloudy conditions. I had full sun, and got a sunburn. The sort that skiers get - where your face is burnt to a crisp except for one stripe across your eyes.