Did anyone see stars during totality?

[magneton]

Viewing the eclipse from Douglas, Wyoming, the sky didn't get nearly as dark as I expected. I heard the same observation from someone who viewed from Nebraska. Although it wasn't a high priority during totality and I didn't put a lot of effort into it, I didn't see any stars, and the only planet I saw was Venus, which was bright and hard to miss.

Did anyone else see stars or other planets, naked-eye or through binoculars?

I wonder if forest-fire smoke caused enough light scattering that it didn't get as dark as normal in the totality zone. If this is right, perhaps there were regions unaffected by the smoke, possibly in Oregon, where it got much darker.

This being my first eclipse, I'm not sure what "normal" is with respect to darkness and star visibility. Perhaps someone with more eclipse experience can say what was going on.

[Wayne]

From western Nebraska, Venus was brilliant. But I specifically looked for Regulus and knew where it would be; these old eyes did not see it. My first eclipse too.

[magneton]

I think rather than light scattering from forest-fire smoke, a more likely explanation of the "twilight" we experienced is the small size of the umbral shadow on earth relative to other eclipses (which also made for a shorter duration of totality). Roughly speaking, the shadow was about 70 miles in diameter, so sunlight was never more than 35 miles from us. Longer-duration eclipses will have a larger shadow on earth which will result in more isolation from the surrounding light and a darker sky.

I asked Suresh about this, based on his experience with past eclipses. He confirmed that previous eclipses with longer duration and wider paths of totality were indeed darker than this one.

All the more reason to look forward to the 2024 eclipse. According to an interactive map I saw, the duration and path width will be 4m 27s and 120 mi at the Texas-Mexico border, and 3m 21s and 107 mi at the Maine-New Brunswick border. It definitely should be darker.

[Enberg]

I was in eastern Oregon, and I saw Regulus with binoculars during totality, and Venus naked-eye. Nothing else was obvious. This seems to have been the case for just about everyone. It has thrown a monkey wrench into the AL Eclipse 2017 Observing Challenge which involved imaging the stars and measuring light deflection to test the General Theory of Relativity.