Thanks for looking at a terrible cell phone photo of a total solar eclipse.

I’d had this idea for a while for the 2017 total solar eclipse, and decided to pull it off only a few weeks before the event. I can be an impetuous sort. On August 1, I posted on Facebook:

Made my eclipse reservation!
Aug. 21, 10:30 a.m.: Flight to Nashville departs
12:01 p.m.: Flight arrives
I take any shuttle to any parking lot or car rental agency. I checked on Google Maps and they're all out in the open
1:27 - 1:29 p.m.: Totality
2:00 - 2:15ish: Board shuttle back to terminal, have a little lunch if there's time, hopefully with a southern view
3:50 p.m.: Flight back to Chicago departs
5:30 p.m.: Flight arrives

It wasn’t without a little suspense, but overall, it ended up being easier than my typical workday. I got to O’Hare in plenty of time — I wasn’t taking any risks. Once we had all boarded, we got word that Nashville was issuing a ground stop on inbound flights. Very considerate, so as not to block the eclipse… which was three hours away. But! It turned out that our plane was so full of astronomers from local universities that we were granted an exemption and allowed to head out on our way.

When we landed, I realized that I didn’t have eclipse viewing glasses. But! A bar in the terminal was giving away glasses with each purchase of Blue Moon beer. I don’t like Coors as a company, and it owns Blue Moon, but I didn’t want to go blind either. So I bought a beer, they handed me my glasses (which are still within reach as I type this), and I went out to the curb and caught a shuttle to the parking lot.

Scouting the airport out on Google Satellite View, I’d chosen a particular knoll in a particular parking lot for its spaciousness. I got there, and it was packed with people who had done the same thing I’d done — flown in earlier, scouted out a place in a parking lot, and gotten ready to watch. I talked to people from Tampa and Louisville as I set up my 360° still and video cameras.

And then this insanely large cloud blocked the sun. The shadows it cast were amazing to see, but that was small consolation. The sun was constantly just on the edge, coming and going, and we kept thinking we could move to another corner of the lot. But we stayed put and a couple of minutes before totality, the cloud just vanished and we had clear skies. Nailed it.

Totality is beautiful and amazing and like nothing I’d ever seen. The beads on the edges of the moon were stunning; the silver light that blankets Earth during a total eclipse was mind-boggling. Everything. The arrival of the shadow. The crickets. The planets and stars. The horizon on fire around all 360 degrees. People all over the airport were screaming and shouting and crying. I could hear people on a distant garage shouting.

Once totality is over, the eclipse is over. It’s fun to watch it getting darker, but getting lighter? The light is pretty normal again within just a couple of minutes, really. I waited 10 minutes or so, which was still well after most of the people on the knoll had left, and went inside to have lunch. I boarded my plane and, once we thought we were going to taxi to the runway, they said that thanks to that hours-long ground stop, they had a lot of catching up to do, and we wouldn’t mind being patient, would we?

We didn’t mind. Stunning day. Over the course of the day, I managed to sleep in a bit, get to O’Hare in time to fly to Nashville, watch a beautiful solar eclipse, fly back, and be back in my apartment by 8. And that is why I goddamn love this photo.

August 21, 2017. Samsung S8+ cell phone, 4.25mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 26mm), f/1.7, 1/30, ISO 160.