Off to see the solar eclipse

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Rahu Credit: Nongnit
[See the full post at: Off to see the solar eclipse]

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Microfix, AJNorth

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“NATURE and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night:
God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.”
— Epitaph on Sir Isaac Newton, by Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

“It did not last: the Devil howling ‘Ho! Let
Einstein be!’ restored the status quo.”
— In Continuation of Pope on Newton, by J.C. Squire (1884-1958), from Poems (1926)

[Sir John Collings Squire (1884 – 1958) was a British poet, writer, historian, and influential literary editor of the post-World War I period.]

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HiFlyer, SueW, Elly, Noel Carboni, EstherD, Microfix, woody

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…and there I was thinking that darkness fell across America on January 20, 2017…

Windows 10 Home 22H2, Acer Aspire TC-1660 desktop + LibreOffice, non-techie

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AJNorth, SueW, Microfix

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and not just America samak..other countries have eclipses

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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And the eclipse we’ve been in isn’t total… or permanent. Let YOUR light shine!

Edit to remove political implications.
Please follow the –Lounge Rules– no personal attacks, no swearing, and politics/religion are relegated to the Rants forum.

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Please confine politics to the Brad Smith topic  or the Rants Forum.

 

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woody

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Pfff… solar eclipse…

I just stand with my back to the sun and admire my cast shadow on the ground.

Now there’s an heavenly body eclipse for you!

*walks away not the least envy of those in the shadow’s path*

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HiFlyer

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The grand agents of Nature are indestructible.

— William Thomson (Lord Kelvin, 26 June 1824 – 17 December 1907)

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Noel Carboni

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It’s quite amazing that at this time in the Earth’s history, right now while WE are alive, the moon is *just* the right distance from the Earth that it can *just* cover the sun.

There will come a time in the future when no eclipse can possibly be total (they will all become annular eclipses, where the sun is visible all around the edge of the moon).

Why? Because the tidal drag coupled with the Earth’s rotation is causing the moon to be made to orbit a little faster all the time – it’s like we’re whipping it around on a string ever faster. There is of course a slight slowdown of the Earth’s rotation.

Thus the moon is getting farther away by a little under 4 cm each year, and total solar eclipses will become a thing of the past in, oh, about a billion or two years.

-Noel

Postscript: I made a small optical eclipse projector with a macro lens and a teleconverter… This is the most sun covered that we saw here in south Florida…

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Elly, Charlie, NetDef, AJNorth

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During the lunar eclipse, how does the Earth’s shadow on the moon change color from black to red?  I am not asking why it is red.  I am asking how a shadow changes color.

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As with many things, it’s something that defies being oversimplified.

It’s dark because of the Earth’s shadow. Then the dark surface is illuminated by reddish-orange light from the sunlight filtering through our atmosphere around the Earth (much like we see it turn a sunset red).

In photos, such as in my montage below, the camera’s exposure time is changed to be MUCH longer, allowing dim red coloration to be seen as though the shadow has changed to red. It was deep red all along, you just didn’t perceive it when a very bright, fully sunlit part was still visible.

The leftmost 5 exposures were about 1/100 second, while the last two were over 1 second each.

-Noel

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Charlie, AJNorth

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I was surprised to see the moon’s shadow on the sun turn red, too.

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Similar effect; with the brilliant sunlight blotted out, you were able to see the much dimmer red hot stuff like solar flares just off the surface of the sun.

It was there all along, it was just hidden by the brilliance of the photosphere’s light.

Some nice photos are surfacing already online, e.g.,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/solar-eclipse-photos_us_599afc5ae4b01f6e801ff252

In some of those photos you can get a pretty good idea how much brighter the photosphere is than the corona or flares.

-Noel

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AJNorth

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Are you referring to the solar eclipse?  If so, something visible on the moon?

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What about the eclipses where it turns red halfway to complete, which seems to be most of them?  It would seem that if this was the case, somebody would have filmed the eclipse twice (one for color, one for luminescence) and merged the two layers together to demonstrate.

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My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. — J. B. S. Haldane

(John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, FRS; 5 November 1892 – 1 December 1964)

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Elly, Noel Carboni

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/21/solar-eclipse-eye-damage

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Elly, NetDef

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Noel Carboni wrote:

It’s quite amazing that at this time in the Earth’s history, right now while WE are alive, the moon is *just* the right distance from the Earth that it can *just* cover the sun… 

The moon’s shadow on earth is only a very narrow path. So we’ll be able to see the solar eclipse as long as the sun shines and the moon stays more or less between earth and sun…

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Elly

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BBC World Service — Discovery:

The Day the Sun Went Dark (2017.08.21) – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cstxn8 (Program downloadable as an MP3; runs 26:43).

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Elly

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My son and I spent yesterday in Wyoming.  The event was awesome.  Traffic was epic.  Here are three pics we took of totality.  I’m considering these low resolution copies from my camera as public domain.  If you copy and share them, please cite the CC0 license.

Enjoy!

 

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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Elly, Charlie, Alice, BobbyB, Microfix, Noel Carboni, MrBrian, AJNorth

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Some technical notes for the curious about my photos above.

1) If you zoom these, you might think you can see stars.  Most of the dots are not, they are damaged pixels on my camera’s sensors.  Someday I hope to get the time to process those out, but these are direct imports from RAW and are not retouched other than cropping.

2) The location was Dwyers Junction, a fairly nice rest stop along I-25 just south of Glendo where state highway 26 breaks off from the freeway.

3) Totality at that location was 1’56” in duration at 11:46AM August 21, 2017, mountain daylight time.

4) The camera was an Olympus E-M5, FL 135mm, Manual focus, f/22, EBias -2.8, 1/100 sec exposure for these unfiltered images.  This is my old hiking camera . . .

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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Elly, Noel Carboni, Kirsty

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Those are great pictures.  Thank you for posting them.

Was hoping to see something memorable in our neck of the woods (Chicago) & was sadly disappointed that we were too far north.  Which is strange considering that a pal of mine in OK got to see totality.

Oh well, maybe 2024 will work out better.

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NetDef

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Nice shots! Thanks for sharing them.

I would probably be guilty of looking around more than looking at the eclipse itself, just because it getting dark in the middle of the day would be so incredibly eerie.

-Noel

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Elly, NetDef

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Noel Carboni wrote:

Nice shots! Thanks for sharing them. I would probably be guilty of looking around more than looking at the eclipse itself, just because it getting dark in the middle of the day would be so incredibly eerie. -Noel

Guilty as charged!  Imagine a 360 twilight sunset – gold and red horizon all around in the distance, closer to us was quite dark for almost two minutes.  The temperature dropped enough my nine-year old asked for a fleece. (Which he abandoned five minutes later.)  We could see a range of mountains to our west that appeared very dark just before totality started over our location, then became fully lit just before totality ended.

Wyoming is notable for constant wind during daytime hours – and Monday was no exception.  But the wind dropped to almost nothing for several minutes starting just before totality.  It resumed about ten minutes later after things started to warm up again.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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Elly

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Thanks for sharing, those photo’s really do the event justice, congrats!

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Elly, NetDef

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From The New York Times (2017.08.21): Your Photos of A Solar Eclipse’s Journey Across America — Photos from the path of totality across the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/21/science/eclipse-reader-photos.html

(This article should also be accessible to non-subscribers.)

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rc primak, Elly, Kirsty

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Here in New England, the 2024 eclipse will be closer to us, and totality is supposed to last longer than this year’s eclipse. But it will take place in early April, so our weather is very dicey. If chances look good for seeing the eclipse, I might make a road trip up to Vermont for the event.

My sister was in Carbondale, IL for this year’s eclipse. I still haven’t heard from her how her experience was.

-- rc primak

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Update — My sister and brother who were in Carbondale had clouds during Totality. they were slightly disappointed. But there’s a lot to see and hear (like bats coming out of hiding) even with a cloud or two overhead. In Boston where I was, we had clouds, but they broke just in time to see Partiality. So the special glasses got some use here and there.

-- rc primak

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