It's an easy hike to the top, even for a decrepit geriatric case such as myself.  The grade is smooth and gentle and you can find a level route over the steeper parts.  There's no specific trail since you're literally walking on a solid granite roack face.  I kept looking down at my feet to see the familiar pink with black flecks, identical to the small granite cobblestones found everywhere in the soil of Cleveland, purportedly transported 1000 miles south from the Canadian Shield by the mammoth glacier that once carved out Lake Erie.  However, There are spots along Enchanted Rock like the pic below where patchy growth can be found.  These scenes are right out of a western movie, as if John Wayne's hacienda is about to be attacked by Comanches.

There are smaller green patches near the top where cactus grows, and even a shallow pond filled with wiggling tadpoles!  Near the summit, it's almost entirely bare rock so you can see to the horizon in all directions.  This will be a FANTASTIC location to view the 2024 total solar eclipse.  Nearly along the centerline, those observers will have 4 minutes and 25 seconds of totality, and a broad panoramic view of the umbra racing toward the Rock at 2000 miles per hour.  Mark is hoping to secure a reservation when that opens in a couple weeks, and I'm sure he will obtain some SPECTACULAR footage of the scene. I'd be so tempted to join him, but I'm committed to staying home to witness this special event from Cleveland.  

Growing up in Cleveland, I had a media-driven impression that Texas was "nothin' but 900 miles of brown dirt."  And while there is  a lot of that, there is so much unique natural beauty in Texas that I never could have imagined.  Last year we also saw Dallas and West Texas, some very diverse terrain in those areas.  Still haven't seen the Pandhandle or the Gulf Coast.  Hoping that the LORD permits us another opportunity to further explore the beautiful and fascinating Lone Star State of Texas.  Thanks to all our Texas readers for tolerating some good-natured ribbing of your fine state!  Here's my blog from two years ago where I make fun of California.  

Texas Eclipse

Texas Hill Country has the distinction of being the "Eclipse Crossroads" for the 2023 and 2024 eclipses.  The area just south of Enchanted Rock including Fredericksburg encompasses the intersection of the path of annularity of the eclipse just past and the path of totality of the April 8 eclipse.  So folks in that area are in for a double treat, less than six months apart.

We were in Boerne, Texas (pronounced "Bernie") on Eclipse Day 2023.  Though clouds were forecast, the day turned out to be pristine -- the kind of weather we're praying for in Cleveland for April 8.  I'll get to my pix in a little while, but first here's some pix submitted from readers of the Classical Astronomy Update.  

We got these pix from Miner Family in Florence, Arizona:

We tried a few methods for viewing, a basic pinhole cardboard, a welding helmet (a cool way to look directly at the sun), but our favorite was projecting through our telescope onto a white background. That method was fun because all of us from greatest to smallest could see, we could take pictures of the projection, and because it was magnified through the telescope optics, we could see relief on the edge of the lunar shadow, and even sunspots on the sun near the limb. 

Near max occlusion.
If you zoom in on that picture, look toward the top of the sun, by the shadow. You will see a small fuzzy spot, which we are pretty sure is a sunspot. No amount of lens cleaning/adjustment moved that spot or made it go away. Sunspots only appeared near the limb, where it was shaded enough to be able to see detail. It was a neat thing to be able to see!

We are excited to get all our “kit” out again next year for the eclipse in April! 

Projected images are cool, but don't attempt pointing a telescope at the Sun unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing!  I don't trust myself to do such a thing!

We also got this slick pic from Paula at Science Lab Tutorials in Rowlett, Texas who writes:

We only had an 80% or so view in the Dallas area, but I got a few pictures that I complied of the eclipse. It was a good dress rehearsal for April! Just wanted to send a compilation of what I saw.  

We got a boatload of images from Jacob in Austin, Texas who viewed the eclipse from Fredericksburg.  Jacob leads off with this Texas-like greeting:

Howdy Jay,

Had a blast watching the Annular Eclipse today, thanks again for your wonderful newsletter last week with excellent diagrams and explanations explaining the phenomenon! Since I live pretty close to the main eclipse path here in Texas, I figured you might like some pictures from someone in the “ring of fire” zone to see a different perspective of the event. I also did some experimenting during the eclipse as well, I already knew about diffraction patterns but I saw some unique applications of the effect which I have not noticed in past eclipses.

I viewed the main eclipse from a city park in Fredericksburg, Texas with a small crowd of assorted onlookers. I had to drive a couple hours from the area north of Austin to get far enough south for full eclipse, and it was fun seeing random people in parking lots for stores and churches with funny glasses gazing upward on my way down. Was a bit late getting off but stopped in Johnson City shortly after I knew the eclipse start would occur, and took a couple pics of barely eclipsed state (timestamps in photo names are local CT time). Camera was just a Pixel Pro smartphone held up to a pair of eclipse glasses (worked great but I tried to help someone else with their phone and could not get the zoom to lock on for more than a golden smear, so your mileage with smartphone cameras may vary depending on model).

Unlike Jacob, I had zero success holding up my lousy flip phone with a pair of Eclipse Shades.  But his sequence is a really great result!  All I was able to capture was some projected images, as shown below.  Jacob made this cool observation of eclipse crescents through the holes in an ordinary street sign, based on the "pinhole camera" principle, projected down onto that Texas brown dirt mentioned above:

There was a cool expansion of this concept though, as there was one of those posts used to hold street signs or construction markers nearby, with mounting holes all the way up its length. Based on the angle of the sun shadows to the post, saw a gradient from crisp normal hole shadows up the pole to blurrier crescent shadows. Neat to see so clearly how viewing angle affects the light patterns.

Jacob also made this interesting observation of lens flare revealing the crescent eclipse phase: 

The last interesting thing I saw was that when taking pictures without the eclipse glasses (mainly to show difference in light levels for reference), the camera occasionally showed lens flares. Each had the same crescent shape as the eclipse shadow at that moment, another neat lighting effect.

Lens flare is caused by internal reflections between individual lenses in a compound lens system, producing fainter, offset images from the main light source, i.e., the Sun.  You can't see the crescent in the direct image of the Sun because it's just too bright, but the fainter lens flare images are at a tolerable brightness level for the camera (or the human eye) to see.

The images below were captured by Mark from our observing site.  The top is my snap of his viewing screen, and the bottom shows his captured image.  You can see lens flare in both.  The below image captures the precise moment of C2, second contact, the start of annularity, when the trailing edge of the Moon is first within the disc of the Sun.  

This image is terribly exciting because the Sun's chromosphere is visible along the rim of the Moon, a sight normally seen with the unaided eye during totality.  Look at those pretty pink patches along the eclipsed limb of the Sun, two small prominences at about 1 o'clock and a big prominence at 3 o'clock.  I had not previously understood that this was even possible, such a cool thing to discover.  

I also snapped a series of eclipse phases projected onto the ground through tree leaves.  You can see the eclipse progression from the changing orientation of the eclipse crescents, and a brief view of eclipse rings at the point of annularity, with the red circles depicting the general shape.  There are a couple decent rings in the middle image, though many are not complete.