Dark Side Of The Sun

About 65% of the sun was covered by the moon around 8:17 PM, Sunday, May 20, 2012 in this view of the west sky seen from the SW corner of the grounds at Christ Community United Methodist Church in Marion, Iowa. The small set of headlights at lower left in the top image is a vehicle along East Robins Road from neighboring Cedar Rapids. Quite frankly, the prospects of even seeing any of the solar eclipse on this evening had not been particularly favorable. Weather forecasts a full week before had been consistently predicting a 30% chance of storms for this day (the only day in the seven-day that had this forecast), and although the storms never materialized, significant cloudiness persisted right up until about 30 minutes from the start of the eclipse (7:23 PM). I felt truly fortunate that skies cleared in time for this rare spectacle! Sunset was eight minutes away when this image was captured. It was relatively safe to look at it without protection at this time.