Eclipse

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Furcurequs
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Eclipse

Post by Furcurequs »

Viewed from where I live, tomorrow's solar eclipse should have a magnitude of about 0.97. I would have to drive a little shy of 90 miles to see it in totality and maybe closer to 110 miles for ideal viewing.

If I had my health, I would probably be making the 1 1/2 to 2 hour drive to see it, or ride along with some friends, but unfortunately I'll probably just walk outside the cabin a few times between 1 and 4 p.m. tomorrow afternoon instead to check it out. ...with a makeshift pinhole viewer, I suppose. It should be at its maximum just after 2:30 pm here.

With the 0.97 magnitude, there should still be enough sunlight for it to appear like an overcast day, so it won't be quite as spectacular an event as it will be for those who get to see the full eclipse.

It really would be neat to see it go dark and then actually be able to look up at the moon without eye protection for those 2 to 3 minutes. Instead, it will look like an overcast day with a slight crescent of light on my piece of cardboard or whatever - though with maybe a glimpse of the real thing out of the corner of my eye. ...if it's not too cloudy, of course. It's supposed to be partly cloudy here tomorrow.
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Eclipse

Post by ME »

We have a partial with a magnitude of 0.06 and around 1.7% coverage.
Portugal would be the best land-travel-option in Europe: magnitude 0.3 and up to 20% coverage.
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re: Eclipse

Post by Furcurequs »

If you didn't know it was happening, you might not have noticed it there with those figures! ...lol

I found a chart with numbers for a city closer to where I am than what I used earlier, and it looks like the eclipse here will actually be more like 0.98 magnitude and a 98% coverage.

The eclipse begins in just over 2 hours now and maxes out in less than 4 hours, and currently there doesn't seem to be a cloud in the sky. So, conditions seem to be perfect for viewing this one. I think it was rather overcast during the last partial solar eclipse that I remember seeing - south Florida in the 1980s.

Oh, I heard something hitting my bathroom window last night and it was a luna moth - which is named for the moon-like spots on its wings. Nice coincidence. The adult moths are only alive for about a week and so are around for only 2 or 3 weeks a summer here - as in only 2 or 3 moth generations a summer each alive as an adult for a week.

I think it's still on the side of my cabin. I'll see if I can grab another picture. I tried last night but they didn't turn out too well.
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Post by ME »

An half hour before sunset, and probably obscured(eclipsed) by clouds: very likely nobody will notice over here.

Perhaps a bit late, but to figure out where to go. https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2017-august-21
There's also an app for some exact fine-tuning (100 yards seems to matter): http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/app.htm
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re: Eclipse

Post by Furcurequs »

That first site won't load for me. I've had problems with some secure https sites lately, though, so it might be a computer or browser problem on my end.

The second site, at least the live version of it, seems to be offline at the moment. It may have gotten swamped.

Anyway, it's a little over 2 hours until maximum/totality in my general area. If I were to get in my car and drive south for about an hour and half, I could probably make it to a place where there is totality, but arghh. I'm probably not feeling up to it. One day I'll probably regret not seeing it, though.

Maybe next time...
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re: Eclipse

Post by ME »

Maybe next time...
Only 7 years: April 8th 2024. See attachment, or http://eclipse-maps.com/Eclipse-Maps/Ga ... es.html#16
Or partially(90%) on October 14th 2023

But did you get your Luna moth?
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re: Eclipse

Post by AB Hammer »

My stepson got to see his first eclipse but I look forward to the on in 2024 for we will be able to see a full eclipse here.
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re: Eclipse

Post by Furcurequs »

Sorry, I fell asleep after the eclipse. I had been up all night.

I do regret not having driven to some place that I could have seen it in totality. It was neat, though, seeing the maximum here in a familiar environment. The sunlight was rather dim and the shadows were eerie. At the maximum the katydids began singing and the crickets started chirping, too, as if it were evening.

I had the urge to look up at the eclipse with my naked eyes, but I resisted. For those who did get to see it in totality, though, being able to do that was probably something special - being able to see a black disk with a glowing corona around it in the dark blue sky.

Hopefully I'll be able to see the next one in totality. It looks like I might have to travel close to 400 miles for that one, however.

Here was the luna moth, btw. Not the best picture. It was in the shade of my covered driveway. ...and the date and time somehow got screwed up on my cheap spy cam. I'll need to reset that again.

Image

Oh, I have some metalized mylar ribbon with a mirror-like finish on both sides. I was able to tape two strips of this in layers over a slot I cut in some cardboard and then used it to view the eclipse some. It worked quite well and gave a bit better view than my pinhole projector.

...and I'm not seeing any spots today, either! So, it was probably safe enough. I didn't spend too much time looking through it, though, just to be on the (slightly) safe(r) side.
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re: Eclipse

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Marchello E.
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re: Eclipse

Post by Furcurequs »

These guys captured the space station transiting the face of the sun during the eclipse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepQoU4oek4
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re: Eclipse

Post by Art »

Nothing succeeds like success !

That was a really impressive feat capturing the images of the space station like that .

He didn't exactly get it transiting from 3 oclock to 9 oclock , but yes 4 o clock to 8 oclock is not bad considering their timing of the approx 2 seconds transit was spot on !

I'm Impressed !
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re: Eclipse

Post by Furcurequs »

It was rather impressive. Do you think a location where the transit would have been from 3 to 9 would have been outside the band of totality? ...or they were just limited by where they could set up their cameras?

I believe they said at the start of the video that they were on native American land and so were fortunate to be allowed to be there at all - since they knew the person who owned(?) the land.

Oh, and PBS's Nova now has an episode on the eclipse - "Eclipse over America." I'm currently watching it.

http://www.pbs.org/video/eclipse-over-america-kgrjsk/

http://pbsinternational.org/programs/ec ... r-america/

Hopefully you can watch it at one of those two linkes. If not, you might want to look for it on youtube sometime later. I've not yet seen it on youtube, however.
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re: Eclipse

Post by Art »

"Do you think a location where the transit would have been from 3 to 9 would have been outside the band of totality? ...or they were just limited by where they could set up their cameras?"

------

In retrospect I think it was that they were limited in the exact location they could put up their camera's .

IIRC he mentioned at the beginning of the video something about the exact preferred location was about 50 km or so away . I tried to rewatch the video to confirm that but for some reason I can't access it anymore .

Just coincidently exactly one year ago today (on 27th August 2016 ) at 2.20 PM (local time) , a beam of light shone through a hole about 1/2 diam in the apex of my shed roof and cast an oval of sunlight on my shed floor right at my feet where I was working . On impulse I drew a line around it with a marker and dated it .The beam of light travelled the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle comprising of 8.400 M along the floor of the shed to the wall that contained the hole and 6.000 M from the floor to the hole at the top . The size of the oval of light cast was 150 mm x 100 mm .

Today at 2.20 PM (27 August 2017) I rememebered to check (thanks to your eclipse posts) whether the Sun was still doing what it was supposed to be doing and would return to the exact location of 2016 !

As luck would have it today was heavily overcast with just a few brief minutes of sporadic Sunshine at around 10 AM . At 2.20 PM it was quite dull and I was thinking that I'd just missed the conclusion of an almost perfect test of orbital dynamics when the cloud thinned a little and I got about 20 seconds of Sunlight strong enough to quickly mark the circle and snap a picture at 2.25 PM . And it has been back to full overcast since then (its now almost 6.00 pm ).

Talk about luck ! And I didn't even pray over that like I sometimes do with my Bessler experiments ! : )

Anyway , the new oval of light was 440 mm due East of the old 2016 one . I don't think I'm up to calculating out the exact spot it should be , but that looks like it is pretty close to telling me that I should correct my calendar every four years to account for an extra bit of rotation the Earth makes in that time !

Actually I find that pretty reassuring to know that (1) My Shed hasn't moved , (2) The Tectonic plate hasn't moved , (3) The Planet hasn't deviated from its orbit , and (4) I'm still here .

I bet that's why the Druids got up so early in the morning so they could obtain that same reassurance !
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re: Eclipse

Post by ME »

Furcurequs wrote:It was rather impressive. Do you think a location where the transit would have been from 3 to 9 would have been outside the band of totality?
A transit of the ISS is just like the transit of the Moon.
If you're into that stuff then it should be relative easy to obtain all the precalculated orbits - I guess JPL is a likely place.
We know the Moon tracked a shadow band across the Earth, so in a similar way we could track the visibility-range of the ISS against the sun.

Those lines apparently crossed, and it also happened the timing of the ISS was exactly right when it flew by during the onset of the eclipse (or they could have made ISS transit pictures on some other day).
I think they could have gone to a place (somewhat south) where the ISS crossed the whole Sun-diameter but that would likely be off the eclipse-path.
For a complete diameter transit (there's likely some terminology for that) the picture could have somewhat been shifted up... and then have an ISS-transit without that Moon nibbling on the Sun.
It's also luckily the timing of the exact crossing was actually a bit off: going a slightly different path the ISS could also have been in front of the Moon during the eclipse.
Marchello E.
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