Earlier this week, the Sun, Moon and Earth aligned to produce a spectacular total solar eclipse. Millions of people across the USA watched in awe as the partial phase ended and the brilliant diamond ring heralded the start of totality.

After a last minute look at the weather my friends Toner and Ron Stevenson and myself headed for Warm Springs, north of Madras and a little north of the centreline. Not quite at Warm Springs we saw the smoke haze on the horizon from bushfires still lingering even though this wasn’t predicted and decided to stay a little north of Warm Springs. This proved a wise decision and we found a great place to observe from along with a few others including some locals from Portland, British Columbians, French , New Zealanders and even a couple of fellow Australians.
Perfect skies provided a spectacular eclipse with a few good prominences visible. Totality was once again over all too quickly. For a few of our observing companions this was their first eclipse and all agreed it was a wonderful site and wished they had seen one before now.

Many left after totality but a few of us remained until the end of the eclipse. After such a wonderful eclipse, we are already talking about the next eclipse in 2019 – South America here we come!