Solar Eclipse

[worth1]

My first one was in the 60s.
They said the next one would be in two thousand something.
I didn't figure I would be alive.
We smoked window glass with a kerosene lamp to darken it.
Didn't go blind.

I honestly can't believe all the goings on about this.
I had to explain to my young coworker how it happened with a cigarette butt and it's shadow.
He totally got it.
Welcome to Grandpa's science class little ones.

[bower]

Apparently the best solar filter for your camera is mylar. (Not good enough for eyes though).
There are some DIY pages or videos to make your own from a bit of space blanket. Or pop tart wrappers.

I was not aware that camera lens or digital sensor can also be damaged, so people filter to protect the camera, not only to facilitate the image.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/ph ... hotography
https://www.instructables.com/3-Camera- ... ar-Filter/

[bower]

There's a free birdwatching app called SolarBird, for citizen science bird watch during the eclipse. Hoping to collect many observations of birds behavior in the event.
https://news.iu.edu/live/news/35465-iu- ... -to-report

Here's the app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... Bird&pli=1

[zeuspaul]

Get 'em while they're available. Act by April 8.

Eclipse fever brings space-themed specials to restaurant menus
https://www.axios.com/2024/04/03/eclips ... clipse-gla
sses

eclipse.png

[slugworth]

I saw a partial one in the 70's
Used a welding helmet

[TomatoNut95]

20240406_162946_HDR.jpg

I opened my pack of Medical King eclipse glasses and I'm rather concerned that the ISO label isn't inside them unlike a lot of glasses I've seen pics of. Should i be worried? They have the 12312-2: 2015 number inside them but the fact that it says they're made in China concerns me because China makes a lot of counterfeit glasses. I've looked through them and they're definitely dark and I can hardly see the LED bulb on my ceiling fan at all. I haven't taken them outside yet.

[TomatoNut95]

I'm either going to send these back or get a refund. Somethings rotten in China. Have a look at the screenshot off Amazon as compared to the pic of the actual glasses. The inside of the left arm definitely does not have the ISO label or rounded CE emblem.

Screenshot_20240328-182902~2.png

[worth1]

Medical King is on the list of safe glasses but it doesn't mean someone isn't faking them.

[TomatoNut95]

Medical King is on the list of safe glasses but it doesn't mean someone isn't faking them.

I read that but these are fake because the inside left arm doesn't have the ISO or CE label on it like the promotion picture on Amazon shows. I checked out pics of other folks's Medial King glasses and they had the ISO and the CE label so mine aren't legit. Too late to buy more, so I'll miss the eclipse. However these glasses may still be good to put over my phone's lens long enough to get a photo if possible. They are dark and passed the household lighting test.

[bower]

Photo lenses don't need as much protection as our eyes.
I also think there's a big difference in snapping a couple of pics vs these setups where they are taking the entire series for hours, with the lens perfectly aligned with the sun. In a hot and sunny situation you could easily imagine damage from heat alone, being focused in there by the lens.

Our ludicrous forecast is now for snow all day. "Flurries" aka 7mm or 7cm depending on which side of freezing.
I don't know why I bother... all celestial events here are a lesson in humility... Keep your eyes on the ground. Sigh.

[TomatoNut95]

I won't be in much heat, it's going to be cloudy and/or raining Monday as well as Tuesday and Wednesday. I might sit on the porch for a short time just watch the darkness or listen to the birds hush. See if the crickets start chirping.

[worth1]

Story has it everyone that speaks a different language can understand each other during the event.

[zeuspaul]

How to make a pinhole camera for eclipse viewing

pinholecamera.png

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/06/total- ... diy-how-to

[zeuspaul]

I Thought About Making Travel Plans for the Eclipse—Then I Had a Realization.

Shannon Palus
Sat, April 6, 2024 at 8:00 AM PDT

“Seeing a partial eclipse,” wrote Annie Dillard in a 1982 essay, “bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him.” She recounts the strange spirituality of witnessing totality on a mountainside in central Washington.

It sounds amazing! And I get her metaphor—you can’t know how wonderful and strange some events in life are until you have experienced them. An astronomer made Dillard’s point in more scientific terms to a reporter at the Montreal Gazette: “A partial eclipse, when you’re just outside the path of totality—be it 99.9 percent—is not 99.9 percent of the experience of a total eclipse. You’re very far from it.” The astronomer had personally traveled to see 10 solar eclipses across the world.

So, yes, in basic terms, I understand why people are going to great lengths to experience Monday’s solar eclipse. The editor of this piece, for example, is driving at least seven hours one way to northern New Hampshire to see it. In 2017 parenting and science writer Melinda Wenner Moyer wondered if hauling her family 2,880 miles across the country to witness the eclipse would be a mistake, before finding the experience “magically surreal—worth every mile.”

But let me make the case for the rest of us, the non–eclipse chasers, who are staying home. The entire U.S. will be experiencing a partial solar eclipse. Just watch that! It may not be as cool, but it will be cool too.

Here was my partial eclipse experience in 2017 in New York: I went on the roof of the apartment building in Chinatown where the Wirecutter, my employer at the time, had a test home and watched with my co-workers as a chunk of the sun got taken out by the moon. It was nice? I don’t think that it changed my life or anything—to go back to Dillard’s comparison—the way marriage has, but in terms of experiences I would like to repeat, it was a good one. A unique twist on a workday, for sure.

There are ways to maximize the enjoyment of a partial eclipse. Ann Finkbeiner, a writer who covers astronomy, among other things, chronicled her experience, during the ’90s, of viewing a partial eclipse from her home in Baltimore, and what happened after she turned her eyes not to the sky but to the ground. She describes the hundreds of tiny crescent “baby eclipses” that formed in the shadows when vines and leaves acted like pinhole cameras. “​​I didn’t have to do a thing for it, God and physics just handed it to us,” she writes, adding, “It wasn’t a big epiphany, more like goofy delight.” That does sound delightful!

And one more layer. We have already established that a partial eclipse is not the same experience as a full one. But will the partial eclipse be a lesser experience? Only if you evaluate it in terms of a three-ish-minute span of time, the length of time the sun will be covered by the moon in the path of totality (though this amount is even less in some places that are still in the totality). What if you include all of the surrounding time, effort, money, and travel that it will take to get to having those three-ish minutes in that place? (As well as the possibility of scrambling to reorient your plans when cloud cover threatens to interfere with the experience.) The New York Times reported that one hotel in Illinois, a normally inexpensive Super 8, is charging nearly $1,000 for a one-night stay during the event. “Having a total solar eclipse pass through the U.S. is kind of like having 20 or 30 Super Bowls happening all at once,” a member of the American Astronomical Society’s Solar Eclipse Task Force told Time magazine. The piece warns of traffic jams and advises eclipse chasers to extend their stays in towns, arriving early and leaving late. I am simply not a person who likes being in crowded areas! Life in New York provides quite enough opportunities for that.

I did not, completely, just lie down and accept the partial eclipse as my eclipse experience. I briefly considered flying to Texas and staying with a friend. (For some reason I now forget, this weekend wasn’t ideal.) I also thought about traveling to Montreal, a city I love dearly. (This time of year, though, can still fairly be considered winter: The city just experienced a snowstorm, and honestly, I don’t want to visit during that.) I guess what I am saying is that, in addition to not liking crowds, I prefer my travel be dictated by terms other than alignment of the moon and the sun.

A partial eclipse may not be the same as a full one, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still cool. To return, again, to Dillard’s metaphor: Marriage is great. But you know what’s also amazing? Kissing!

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/m-glad- ... 00941.html

[worth1]

I changed the batteries out in my welding hood yesterday in anticipation of possibly seeing something.
Not like I'm going out of my way to possibly see something.
I thought it went to 14 but it goes to 12.
That's still really dark and I've looked at the sun with it before anyway.
No spots in front of my eyes after closing them either.
One idiot on YouTube said the sun wouldn't make one of these hoods go dark.
He probably didn't have the batteries installed.
Lots of idiots on YouTube that claim to be experts in a field they know nothing about.
Mine goes dark if I look at a light bulb.
To my horror I saw that my welding hood cost over a hundred dollars now.
When the devil did that happen?
I don't remember playing anywhere close to that much.

[worth1]

Burnett Texas a small Texas town of around 6,400 people is said to have swollen to 30,000 people.
Loud music playing all night.
Fredericksburg Texas say crowds not as big as expected.

[crunch1224]

I'm not heading down south I'm just going to stay where I'm at. Coverage will be 96-97% so that's good enough for me lol.

[karstopography]

We are in the zone of totality. Drove out yesterday morning and staying in an old friend’s cabin on the N. Llano River. The wildflowers were beautiful all along the way. Purple Verbena is all over the place here. So are more butterflies than I’ve ever seen in my life. I believe we have about 2.5 minutes of totality here, sort of on the western side of path. Traffic was nonexistent yesterday. We avoided town last night and brought all our groceries.

[worth1]

Not prime but it's free.

Screenshot_20240408-082139.png

[OmarLittle]

Traveled to Indiana, weather looks great. Camera is ready. Now to find somewhere and avoid traffic