American solar eclipse

[sardia]

I'm surprised there isn't a thread for this. I'm stuck at work, so I'll only get 95% darkness. I'm desperately searching for a level 13 welding mask before the eclipse starts in an hour.

[gmalivuk]

I suspect a lot of the discussion that would have happened in its own thread has instead been taking place in the multiple comic discussion threads about it.

I have students interested in it here in Boston, but unfortunately most of the YouTube videos I found that I could have shown them are about how to view it and things to look for in the path of totality. (We'll get like 63% here or so.)

[HES]

I flew back from the US yesterday, so no eclipse for me. Except:

There are even parts of western Europe, including the UK and Ireland, that will snatch a sight of the Moon's disc taking a bite out of the Sun just as it sets.

[Soupspoon]

I flew back from the US yesterday, so no eclipse for me. Except:

There are even parts of western Europe, including the UK and Ireland, that will snatch a sight of the Moon's disc taking a bite out of the Sun just as it sets.

I must check, in a couple of hours, whether the hill I (needlessly, given the ubiquitous mid-day visibility of the Sun, clouds allowing) climbed to view the last local partial is high enough to give me a sun-down view at that penumbral slice. Or I'll just climb it anyway. It's close enough to home, and excercise is excercise!

(ETA: Regardless of positional optimums, it's cloudy. Not even a convenient gap at the horizon.)

[heuristically_alone]

This would be a great place for people to post their pictures.

[poxic]

The best I got from one of my pictures was a lens flare that showed a bite out of the sun. The main pic was (more or less as expected) just a sun washout.

Also, it cooled off a bit outside and got slightly dim, like the forest fire smoke was back. It's coming back to full brightness now.

Apparently there will be another in seven years. Mental note to self: get the damn glasses this time.

[sardia]

Here's what I got at 95%. Phone plus level 10 welding mask. I'm googling symptoms of sunburn corneas as we speak.

[gmalivuk]

I borrowed a stranger's glasses for a moment to look at the maximal eclipse but didn't want to keep them long enough to take a photo. I was however able to make an improvised pinhole projector and then someone left a cereal box pinhole viewer on a windowsill that I took a couple other pictures into. (Here they are in reverse order.)

[Xanthir]

My wife accidentally took a great shot - the sun itself is flared out, but the lens flare got a really sharp rendition of the eclipse: https://twitter.com/tabatkins/status/899685444081770496

[Liri]

I was cold and wet but I was within the totality so it got very dark. We hiked into pretty much the one spot in the area that was rained on.

[eSOANEM]

My dad got this shot but, well, he has a fancy camera and flew across the pond to camp in Madras for this one shot.

[ObsessoMom]

I'm googling symptoms of sunburn corneas as we speak.

The Guardian had this article.

(Shame on you, Guardian. Seriously, sardia, I hope you're okay.)

[pogrmman]

I got to see totality. It was really, really awesome.

Unfortunately, no photos here with only my phone.

We drove for 3 hours trying to find a spot without clouds and ended up on the side of a small dirt road with a few other cars. There wasn't a single cloud during totality. It was one of the few spots in northernish Missouri that wasn't cloudy to some extent.

I was surprised by how much bigger the corona seemed in person than in photos -- is it because to get it all they'd be overexposed?

I seriously think it may be the coolest thing I've ever seen. Fortunately, my house is in the path of the 2024 eclipse. For everybody else, I suggest you make plans for that one if you can -- it's totally worth it to get to somewhere where there is totality. I'd seen two partial ones before, but it doesn't compare at all to a total one.

[Soupspoon]

Fortunately, my house is in the path of the 2024 eclipse. For everybody else, I suggest you make plans for that one if you can

Hey, guys, it seems we're all invited to Pogr's house. Bring beer recently drained beer bottles!

[p1t1o]

If anyone is interested, there will not be a total solar eclipse visible from the UK until 2090.

[speising]

i'm seriously considering going on vacation in Chile in 2019. Unfortunately, the eclipse there is in winter (july).

[Soupspoon]

i'm seriously considering going on vacation in Chile in 2019. Unfortunately, the eclipse there is in winter (july).

Isn't it always Winter in Chilly? (Like Narnia, obviously.)

[sardia]

I'm googling symptoms of sunburn corneas as we speak.

The Guardian had this article.

(Shame on you, Guardian. Seriously, sardia, I hope you're okay.)

Ok, symptoms have faded. Looks like it was just a scare or very minor. Also, looks like I'm taking a road trip in 2024 for the southern Illinois eclipse. Though I heard that annular eclipses aren't as cool.

[Ranbot]

Here's a neat interactive map that shows the next 15 solar eclipses around the world.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fut ... r-eclipses

i'm seriously considering going on vacation in Chile in 2019. Unfortunately, the eclipse there is in winter (july).

You could see the solar eclipse in Chile [or Argentina] in December 2020 instead.

Or put plans in motion to move to Australia in about 10 years. (see link above)

[speising]

Here's a neat interactive map that shows the next 15 solar eclipses around the world.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fut ... r-eclipses

i'm seriously considering going on vacation in Chile in 2019. Unfortunately, the eclipse there is in winter (july).

You could see the solar eclipse in Chile [or Argentina] in December 2020 instead.

Or put plans in motion to move to Australia in about 10 years. (see link above)

#whynotboth
Seriously, the 2020 is probably better than 2019, but it is really far south. I'd love to tango in BsAs under an eclipse, but it will be late evening there.

[pogrmman]

Fortunately, my house is in the path of the 2024 eclipse. For everybody else, I suggest you make plans for that one if you can

Hey, guys, it seems we're all invited to Pogr's house. Bring beer recently drained beer bottles!

In all seriousness, I'm probably going to plan to be at Enchanted Rock or Fredericksburg or Llano during the eclipse. My house is only on the very edge of totality, and it's worth me driving a bit to get more totality.

EDiT: Or maybe further south like Uvalde or Del Rio to try and escape the crowds.

[Soupspoon]

(Hey guys, the house will be empty. Bring sports equipment, sexual partners, motorcycle gangs, the local PD, the local FD, state troopers, the National Guard, CSI, TV station satellite relay vans…)

[Flumble]

Maybe we should build a giant lamp at pogrmman's house and shine it at the Moon so the eclipse turns into a full moon? The local PD, the local FD, state troopers, the National Guard, CSI, TV station satellite relay vans will show up for sure. And the neighbours too, because of the power outage.
Not sure how to lure motorcycle gangs.

[thunk]

I'm also willing to help out with pogrmman's project and more properly prepare for a better eclipse watching experience.

For this one, my thoughts are on the Time Thread.

[ObsessoMom]

Ok, symptoms have faded. Looks like it was just a scare or very minor.

Very glad to hear it, sardia.

[KnightExemplar]

I was surprised by how much bigger the corona seemed in person than in photos -- is it because to get it all they'd be overexposed?

The human eye has a better dynamic range than digital cameras. It will take a very carefully taken old-school film camera to really capture the moment perfectly. I don't think digital cameras can actually fully capture what I saw.

I mean, the pictures that are being posted are very beautiful and all... wayyyyy better than what I've taken. The only "successful" picture I've taken with my phone camera was the crescent shadows through the trees.

I seriously think it may be the coolest thing I've ever seen. Fortunately, my house is in the path of the 2024 eclipse. For everybody else, I suggest you make plans for that one if you can -- it's totally worth it to get to somewhere where there is totality. I'd seen two partial ones before, but it doesn't compare at all to a total one.

Agreed. Not only are partial vs total eclipses totally different... but the photos do not do the event justice. I mean, photographs are the best way to share the event, but this is seriously something that can only be (currently) witnessed in person.

Its not just the sun / moon which photographs barely can explain... the whole "color" of the sky and feel of totality cannot be replicated unless you're exactly within the event. The color-washout into darkness is highly unusual. Its similar to a sunset, except "without any red". The sky seems to show off the shadow of the moon as well: looking westward you can see the shadow approaching with a darker sky (without any clouds), while the east looked as blue as any day.

--------------------

Personally, I did not witness the moment of totality (although I witnessed the moment when the sun started to look through the moon, I guess "reverse" totality). I was too busy looking at a hill maybe 2 or 3 miles away, trying to take a glimpse of the approaching moon shadow. Unfortunately, the mountain was too close: the progression from "bright light" into "eclipse darkness" was far smoother than I expected.

I've heard of people watching the approaching "moon shadow" when on the top of a mountain or something. You'll probably need to be able to see 20-miles or more out. The shadow approaches at 1000+ miles per hour (Roughly 3-seconds per mile) but you still need several miles of space to even see the smooth gradient of the shadow on the ground. More than the ~2 or 3 miles that were at my location.

[Liri]

This is where I was for the eclipse (about 20 minutes before it started pouring down rain, at which point I hid under some rhododendrons)

[SecondTalon]

I went. Was at my farm about 30 minutes from Hopkinsville, KY. The six hour drive home (normally 2.75 hours. Ish.) was worth it.

[KnightExemplar]

I went. Was at my farm about 30 minutes from Hopkinsville, KY. The six hour drive home (normally 2.75 hours. Ish.) was worth it.

My drive was 20 hours, still worth it. But damn that post-eclipse traffic sucked.

I'm slightly exaggerating, since I'm including a few pre-eclipse related events. We were originally planning Nashville for the Eclipse, but noticed that the cloud coverage was... worrisome. So we changed our plans to "Spring City", which had no clouds, which involved a 2-hour drive. The drive after Spring City was 3:15ish (when we left) to 5:30pm (arrival at Knoxsville for dinner), and then a nice long drive till 7:30AM before we arrived home.

We stopped at a random 24-hour Denny's at 3:00am to stretch our legs and grab a snack for the long journey. So we had a total of ~4 hours of breaks between 3:15pm (post-eclipse) and 7:30am (arrival).

The total driving time spanned from 10:30am Monday (leaving breakfast café) to 7:30am Tuesday (including 4-hours for food, and roughly 1-hour for eclipse viewing). That's roughly "in and around the car" for 21-hours.

Still worth it. Would do again, although maybe next time I'll fly instead of drive.

[Xanthir]

Yeah, there's a reason several of my friends who traveled to see totality turned it into a multi-day vacation - it led them avoid the post-eclipse traffic!

[thunk]

My post-eclipse getting back from central Missouri was slightly less traffic bound than most (2 hours of delay probably) but it was still too much to accomplish solo; I was out of position in the early morning and had to drive 4.5 hours east earlier (an interesting exercise in weather forecasting).
Still fun, though for me it was about 40 percent up Randall's chart.
Depression has shot my sense of wonder at the universe.

[chridd]

I was surprised by how much bigger the corona seemed in person than in photos -- is it because to get it all they'd be overexposed?

Really? To me, it seemed smaller that in photos—it just looked like a white outline around where the sun would normally be, whereas the photos I took it looked much larger. Unless I'm misremembering?

Anyhow, I just put some of the pictures I took on my site, if anyone cares

[New User]

My dad got this shot but, well, he has a fancy camera and flew across the pond to camp in Madras for this one shot.

eclipse.jpg

That photo is on the main page of wikipedia right now.

[eSOANEM]

↶

My dad got this shot but, well, he has a fancy camera and flew across the pond to camp in Madras for this one shot.

That photo is on the main page of wikipedia right now.

Huh. The wikimedia stuff says the one there was taken in madras (where my dad was). I'd guess it was just taken at the same time so got the corona looking very similar?

Unrelated to the above: I just watched a video from a flatearther on youtube about how the eclipse proves that the round-earth heliocentric model is fake. The main arguments seemed to be that one person filming it said that it was happening an hour earlier than they'd expected (I suspect they either just had their clock wrong or checked the time for the wrong place); that they couldn't see the moon before the eclipse started and so it must have just been the sun deciding to to do that (it's the newest new moon you get, of course you couldn't see it); and that the shadows looked weird (well yeah, the sun was still high in the sky but the light intensity was down where it is when the sun's setting and the shadows are loooooong, of course that combo'll look weird).

Edit: just did a closer comparison of the two photos, I think the coronae differ a little bit in a couple of places, particularly on the left side so I suspect it's just a case of the same shot being taken from the same place at almost the exact same time

[New User]

What a coincidence. I concluded that your dad worked for NASA and was also a wikipedia contributor. Maybe he was standing near the NASA photographer!

[p1t1o]

Unrelated to the above: I just watched a video from a flatearther on youtube about how the eclipse proves that the round-earth heliocentric model is fake. The main arguments seemed to be that one person filming it said that it was happening an hour earlier than they'd expected (I suspect they either just had their clock wrong or checked the time for the wrong place); that they couldn't see the moon before the eclipse started and so it must have just been the sun deciding to to do that (it's the newest new moon you get, of course you couldn't see it); and that the shadows looked weird (well yeah, the sun was still high in the sky but the light intensity was down where it is when the sun's setting and the shadows are loooooong, of course that combo'll look weird).

URGH!

Christ man, this is a family website...

[morriswalters]

Look at today's strip.

[Soupspoon]

(Without tracking down that FlatEarther diatribe…) I wonder if the "happens an hour earlier than it should" has something to do with the assumption that it should be exactly noon¹ when it all lines up, yet it happens at 11:00 AM for that person. And understandable misunderstanding, as it were.

And/or the confusion of daylight savings.

I didn't do much in-depth research on this, but on a single "click map for details" website I discovered that totality occurred at times ranging from 10:16 (local-to-West-coast time²) to 14:47 (local-to-East-coast time²), so there's definitely a bit of that track that could contain a person so misaligned in both time and concept. And the exact states involved don't disabuse me of this notion.


¹ In the modern sense, that is. Barely anyone uses it for 3PM, since the C12^th, but if anyone does then an xkcd fora reader might.

² Presumed. It didn't qualify the time with PST/PDT and EDT/EST suffixes. But hitting points along the track seemed to show hour-leaps as the nation was traversed.

[eSOANEM]

I think the person was saying the eclipse was supposed to be at 14:15 or something but they started noticing things about 13:06. I can't remember the exact times but it was definitely 14:xx and 13:yy and I think one of them was 6 past

Here's the vid I saw, I forgot the inverted light stuff, that was pretty bizarre.

Edit: "it's 1:30 here in Cincinnati, and this is supposed to happen at 2:30". From data here it looks like the partial eclipse began at 1 with totality at 2:29 and it ended at 3:52. I suspect it was just this guy noticed it during the partial and didn't realise it took as long as it did?

[PM 2Ring]

Shadows under trees look strange during an eclipse. All the little gaps in the foliage act like pinhole cameras, and normally they project circular images of the Sun, creating the familiar dappling. But during an eclipse that dappling pattern is modified because the Sun images become crescents. You can see this effect in the shadow photo on chridd's site, linked a few posts ago.