Solar eclipse 2017

i stayed inside, because i heard eclipse rays can damage your brain.

 

^Tough audience lol. I was "over the moon" with 87%.

 

Ok, try this, BMW i3-REx to drive up to see the eclipse and back home:

• 334 miles - Google map distance, actual a little longer
• 6.991 gal = 2.320+2.344+2.327 (premium)
• 47.8 MPG - often cruising at 70 mph, with A/C, 85-93F

Bob Wilson

 

I made a large, pin-hole camera box with a slot to hold the iPhone. But hindsight, I didn't get the auto-focus set up correctly. On the iPhone, you have to set the focus before starting the recording and I didn't do it right. The time lapse worked; mounted to the box, no vibration but the focus was off. My practice video was better and I learned that black, duct tape conducts some light. Wrap an seams with aluminum foil.

• http://hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/BMW/eclipse_010.m4v - full totality with unfocused iPhone
• http://hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/BMW/eclipse_030.m4v - practice with iPhone and focus

I was hoping to get a photo of the star field but I needed a larger lense to capture the light. Worse, you can't see Venus that was outside the field of view. However, I could see the high clouds evaporate as the eclipse proceeded. A pin-hole camera pretty much keeps everything in focus.

Just as we approached and left totality, the sun light was effectively coming from a crescent point-source. So you could briefly see the leaf shaped shadows. This is different from the ad hoc, pin-hole lenses from overlapping leafs that showed the crescent, partial eclipse, and only lasts seconds.

I was also amused when the cicadas began singing in the dusky light and my fellow observers called them 'crickets.' I was amused to watch and listen to the observational modes:

• clinical/scientific - trying to get the corona and near stars, mine failed except for Venus which was too far away to be affected by the sun gravity.
• human observable - the ad hoc pin-hole lenses, the crescent point source, critters, cloud effects, the circular twilight.
• observing humans - the instant traffic jams when totality ended and joy of an instant, science-like party, the idiots who set off fireworks, and someone who fired off bursts with their fully, automatic weapon and hearing the echoes. Escaping the 'fair ground', arcade that Spring City became and those who think more people watching something together is better.

My other goal was to drive far enough to fill the BMW i3-REx tank several times. After coding, it is up to 2.3 gallons but my goal was 2.4 gallons. I now have enough sample fill-ups to trust the new tank size. However, I think there may be another 0.5 gallons in the tank ... a different thread.

Bob Wilson

 

Our good friend @wxman can help but what happens is many cumulous clouds form when an updraft from solar heating of dark soil gets warm, moist air up high enough it can condense to fog. Though we often think the white fog should reflect light, it also absorbs sunlight, warming the fog that rises higher, drawing in more moist air at the base. The long, ramp to totality turns off both the solar heating of the earth and the cloud.

My first total eclipse, there won't be another one in North America until 2024. So I'll have clues to look for and use the iPhone as a panoramic viewer and audio recorder.

What are the Chinese practices with fireworks?

In the Marines, we got hands on with fully automatic weapons. I remember three, distinct, ~8-10 round bursts, fairly high rate. I heard both the initial weapon fire and about half a second later, a slightly louder echo. At the time, all three bursts were of identical duration. The fireworks did not echo.

Observation point: 35.691319 -84.370457 eleven 841 ft

• fireworks and cicadas were to the east and we could see the air bursts above the trees

Bob Wilson

 

people are complaining of headaches today... might be our fearless leader though.

 

I saw some dodgy practices with the 'glasses' on Monday and rather expected that would be the case. I knew pin-hole camera would be safe.

Bob Wilson

 

The typical afternoon convective clouds completely disappeared here too (we had about 99% of totality). Convection seems to stop at about 50% coverage.

The only thing I can think of as far as high clouds (cirrus?) is that they were blow-off from deep convection upstream, and lost the moisture source when the deep convection died.

 

Kind of off-topic, but on my mind:

It's pure good luck, that the moon and sun are the same (perceived) diameter, in the sky. This is dependent on their diameters, earth's orbit diameter, and the moon's orbit diameter? The latter used to be smaller? It's still increasing?

 

I think the fact that the Sun to Earth distance is around 400 times greater than the distance from the Moon to the Earth, and the fact that the Sun's diameter is around 400 times larger than that of the Moon, which means they both subtend very nearly the same angle when viewed from the Earth, a fact which is purely coincidental, but the Moon's orbit is changing slightly over long periods of time, and so some eclipses are total, and some annular (at least that's how I understand it!)

 

One of my fellow observers claimed the eclipse was proof of God's creation. I was briefly tempted to comment that evolution was pretty brilliant of God too but I was there for the eclipse.

Bob Wilson

 

I think if I were in your position I might have allowed the subsequent conversation slowly descend eventually into the "…yeah, but my Invisible Friend can beat up your Invisible Friend!" type of debate!

 

Wow!!!!!!!

 

Excellent!

With a little photo editing, I see at least four stars.

Bob Wilson

ps. Being IR, it would be tacky to point out CO{2} glows . . . as do several other components.

 

That picture is a little what it looked like in my 6-inch reflector telescope, except in addition there were beautiful pink solar flares around the edge.

We had partial success from our vantage point outside of Carbondale IL. We only had one small cloud the whole time, but it was a very smart cloud that knew exactly when totality was, and it moved in front of the Sun just after the start of totality, and it moved away just a before the end...so we had a shortened viewing period.

Courtesy SpaceWeather.com, this photo shows the pink solar flares. They were a nicer than shown here.