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It's not related to fossils, but astronomy is one of my other passions. I've managed to snap a few photos over the years.... Comet Halley, March 1986: Comet Hale-Bopp, March 1997: I hope to capture Comet ISON later this year.... Eclipse at sunset, May 2012: Venus transit at sunset, June 2012: Both events at sunset within a month.... What are the odds? Anyone else have astrophotos?

Since the big celestial show is just three weeks away, I figure it's time for a new eclipse thread. Link to the 2017 Total Eclipse thread, for reference: https://www.thefossilforum.com/topic/67852-2017-total-eclipse/ Interactive Google map of the 2024 path: http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2024_GoogleMapFull.html

On Wednesday, I got a text from Lee of an incredible discovery he made. I rushed off with in a multiple hour drive to assist his dig, ultimately spending two days working together on his find until we were both exhausted. He'll tell that epic, still unfolding story when he's ready The last day of that dig though, I made it home well into the night, looking like a swamp monster covered in plaster and mud. I took a brief shower, woke up the next morning bright and early with plaster still in my hair, and loaded the car buzzing with energy. Pita and I were to drive out west to see the solar eclipse, putting ourselves right in it's path. The Texas hill country can be a wild place- broad swathes of limestone canyonlands and valleys, full of interesting extant wildlife and millions of years of early Cretaceous gems. It was a beautiful way to see a rare astronomical event. Some phone pics of the event below. The blacked-out photos are how the eclipse appeared through the special eclipse glasses (essentially pieces of X-ray paper in a frame) Dung beetles were rolling horse manure everywhere we went Herpetofauna of course. Usually while I'm hunting, Pita frolicks about looking for local herps On the way back home the next day I spotted a roadcut that I was willing to try. I've tried small roadcuts a couple times before, and I've always been skunked. We hoped our odds would be different. Mapped as upper-glen rose limestone, I didn't have high hopes, since I knew the really productive Glen rose member was the lower unit. Little did I know I was actually about to embark on a sea urchin bonanza of my wildest dreams. From nearly off the bat, Loriola? showed up in force: Other fossils showed up as well, such as this: Algal fruiting body? There were also some larger Tetragramma bits lying around here and there Early on, I saw a beautiful complete Coenholectypus gracing the exposure too. This will be a nice prep project: at home: So, a good show from the upper glen rose, a lovely weekend of solar eclipses, rolling hills, unusual animals and amazing fossils concluded! Wishing y'all good times in the field, Jared

Who's going to make a point of viewing the upcoming solar eclipse (August 21!!!)? Are you planning to travel to get into the zone of totality? I live quite close, from my house I should have 99.65% of the sun covered. However there is a big difference between "close" and a total (100%) eclipse, so I'll be driving about 30 miles to a park that's close to the center of the path of totality. Assuming of course that it isn't cloudy (knock on wood!). Already got my eclipse glasses. Here's a great web site with a map of the path of the eclipse. You can zoom in as close as you want, and if you double click on any point it will show you the % of the sun that will be covered, the local time of the start and finish of the eclipse, all kinds of great info. One more thing, be sure your eclipse glasses are authentic. I heard on NPR yesterday that some people are manufacturing/selling counterfeits that won't adequately protect your eyes. You might not notice the damage immediately, or feel pain that would let you know something bad is happening, and the damage is permanent. Personally I think people who do this should spend a very long time in prison, they are just evil. Don

Tammy and I left South Florida yesterday and arrived in Spokane, WA after a short stopover in Las Vegas. Didn't win any money in any of the hundreds of slot machines in the Las Vegas airport but then it is significantly more difficult to win when you don't sit down and pour your hard earned money into the gaping maws of these one armed bandits. We drove from Spokane up to an area in the northern panhandle of Idaho near Lake Pend Oreille to a small town (population 530) called Clark Fork. We settled into the Clark Fork Lodge and had a surprisingly fancy meal at a quirky little place called the Squeeze Inn. I had not suspected I could get a really tasty IPA and a dish of gnocci gorgonzola in such a small rural setting but it was a truly welcome surprise after a long day of traveling. This morning we headed a few minutes out of town to a locality I found in my Rockhounding Idaho book. Someone took the time to transcribe all of the 99 sites listed there and make a Google Maps map out of it which can be found here: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1yS2FsEzCIFPU2_G1Pr5SH3oN9DY&ll=45.56234707000023%2C-114.16501500000004&z=6 We were at site 8A (48.15076, -116.15902) in this book which listed fossil stromatolites in a roadcut just out of town. With the help of Tammy's iPad we easily navigated to this site and spotted the roadcut and got out to have a look. There was lots of rusty brownish rocks on the talus slope of this cut as described in the book's description of the site. We could easily see the outcrop at the top of the hill from which these broken chunks of rock were sliding down to the road level. We scanned the rocks for the distinctive rusty squiggly pattern described in the book (which said these were quite common here). Try as we may we could not find anything matching the stromatolite description in the text. We did see evidence of extremely ancient shorelines with rippled and cracked muddy sediments frozen into place hundreds of millions of years ago. I tried to load one nice looking piece into the back of our JEEP but, given the current laws of physics, I did not succeed. I tried several times to work my way up the talus slope but the rocks were just too loose to gain much of a foothold and get very far up-slope. Any attempts to climb up resulted in sliding back down on a carpet of rocks that dropped away just as quickly as I stepped upward doing a pretty good mimicry of the stairmaster endless escalator exercise machine at my gym. As I couldn't see any definite stromatolite pieces down lower in the piles I suspected I'd not find anything different higher up and didn't feel like a major injury on the first day of a 10-day trip (for once, common sense got the better of me). I did find a smaller piece of ripply shoreline that I considered lugging back in my suitcase and an interesting layered piece that was quite different from most of the other rocks but I was there for (what was supposed to be an easily obtained) sample or two of fossil stromatolite and, striking out on this locality, gave up with only photos to remember this fun but fruitless hunt.