Here is an album of shots from the 2024 Eclipse, shot from Magog, Quebec (near Sherbrooke) after a long odyssey to avoid clouds, detailed below.

For best viewing, Go to Google Eclipse Photo Album

This eclipse, my 7th, was a major effort to assure clear skies and good photos. As the last domestic eclipse for ages, I decided to bring a LOT of gear to take photographs automatically while I watched. Over 200lb of gear, because United gives us 4 free 70lb bags. 3 cameras (2 rented) and 2 telescopes and 400mm lens, plus cell phone video cameras and smaller ones. It was too much, and some of it failed -- you never play with the gear during the eclipse, that way lies madness, and things usually go wrong. My new effort this time was and 8K 12 bit raw video which should capture an immense amount of data. I can't process that for some time, though. Plus other stills. Having all this gear does constrain you -- you must watch near your car, you must have a big car, and flying is a production. Ideally you watch from your hotel in the central region.

We originally planned Texas, as it is the least cloudy convenient target, and we would drive. But it's 3 days each way and the large luggage allowance led us to fly. I booked rooms in Texas and Mexico but soon it became clear the clouds could be bad there, possibly raining all day. On the other hand, the forecasts for Quebec and northern NH/VT were very good. I booked flights to NYC and a rental car last minute to leave options open.

But...

United (and most other airlines) won't let you have two flights to two places. They immediately wrote and said I had to choose. I wanted to choose on the day of flight. Nuh-uh. I asked them, "So you are telling me I should fly on American as doing it on two airlines would not trigger this?" They don't care. But I couldn't really fly on AA -- the 200lbs of luggage would incur huge fees each way. So we switched to a New England/Quebec road trip. Not really the best time of year for one, but they still have lots of lobster. I booked a B&B in upstate NY first through Google/BluePillow/Booking but Bluepillow is a scam and I ended up with a reservation in Jordan. (I wondered why the BnB had an Arabic web page...)

In spite of the great forecasts in Quebec, the only hotel I could really find there was in a location that later got a forecast that clouds might arrive right at eclipse time. Just high cirrus, but after all this effort, I wanted the perfect skies just a short drive to the east, so I switched to a hotel near Sherbrooke for the night of the 8th, and it got perfectly clear skies.

Now, as it turned out, many people in Texas saw it, and that's good, though many got fully or partially clouded out, so it was a good decision. My brother flew to Sherbrooke as well in a friend's plane but we didn't get to meet, they were in and out quickly. This eclipse featured one of the best coronas I've seen, very wide and detailed.