Second contact and totality

Observers are reporting signs that epsilon Aurigae's light has plateau'd during the past week or so, suggestive that second contact was reached - that is, the dark disk now stretches across the nearly 1.5 astronomical unit diameter F star.   Exact time of second contact  can only be determined in hindsight, but the  change in the rate of decline is noteworthy.  Comparison with last eclipse is informative, although the data density is somewhat less.  In part, second contact was not the final, minimum brightness for the system.  Rather, another drop of 0.03 mags happened about a month after the initial minimum, then a slow decline over several months until so-called mid-eclipse brightening started around mid-eclipse (and the seasonal close approach of sunlight made those observations very difficult).
The message here is to keep up the observing!  Now we are into interesting times: small variations during totality are mapping out structure in the disk - structure that can be uniquely determined only by the observational data collected this year.  Thank you for your efforts!