The night before the eclipse things did not look good in terms of weather. For this eclipse we had driven from Ohio to Williamsburg Virginia and were in contact with other eclipse chasing friends who were in town for the same purpose. The original plan was to observe the eclipse, a near total, near Williamsburg and then tour the town and area. That was the plan, but the weather always rules when an eclipse is involved.

At about 2am the phone rang in the hotel room. It was Jim McKay, weather guru with the national weather service who had just gotten an update. If we left in two hours we could be in Greensboro NC in time for the eclipse. So we packed up the car and took off following the Sky and Telescope tour bus to the airport in Greensboro, NC. Jim had contacted the weather people there and they had agreed to let us set up at the end of a runway parking area.

Just after getting our tripods dug in came first contact. But we were also in the clear! A front was visible off to the north and it was clear where we were set up. As the eclipse became near anular I attempted to get some pictures through the Questar telescope at VERY fast exposures. There were only a few seconds and I was hoping to catch some prominences. Turns out I was way too fast and I managed to strip the film sprocket holes on the first advance. That meant I got a lot of pictures on a single exposure. @#$%!! It was not pretty.

The view through the eyepiece was dicey. I didn't want to look but did after moving the telescope away from the photosphere so that only the dark part shown. I did see a slight bit of corona but only for a glance as I felt I had chanced it enough and wanted to resume my picture taking (still not knowing the fate of the film).

- Report by Bill Kramer, Pictures by Denise Kramer