Partial Solar Eclipse Tonight

grouchomarxist writes "There is going to be a partial solar eclipse tonight. It will mainly be visible by people in the southwest of the United States. People in Mexico will have the best view, there it will approach a full eclipse." Space.com has a nice page on it too. Enjoy this solar event!

Comments

The Mayan Calendar ends in 2012

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely this 2012 eclipse will signify to coming apocalypse and end of the world? There's no other possible reason they wouldn't have plotted their calendar out further.

the ring of fire

[F2F]

actually some people will have a chance to see the amazing annular eclipse which is much more interesting.

i saw the full eclipse last year (in bulgaria) and will definitely have my smoked glass for tonight's (50% only, where i'm at) eclipse!

Re:Don't look directly at it

[Negadecimal]

They say it's BAD, real BAD to look directly at an eclipse. Personally, I think it's an old wives' tale.

It's always bad to look at the sun. But people tend to stare at it more during an eclipse (duh), so that's why it comes up.

I live in Denver, where the sun is still dark red from all of the smoke moving through town. Should make for an incredible sunset.

Videotaping the Eclipse

[daviddennis]

I'm in the Los Angeles area and own a Canon XL1 MiniDV camcorder with a 16:1 zoom. I was thinking of going up to a nice high point in my area and videotaping the eclipse, using a portable battery and a 9" Sony TV to compose and focus the image. I would then use my camera's manual exposure controls to taste based on the image on the Sony.

If I just go out and start shooting the sun, is this going to damage my camcorder if I use its built-in neutral density filter?

I will be synchronizing my camera's internal clock to Pacific Bell time - will that be good enough to match the time predictions?

I don't think I will have time to buy a filter, but viewing the eclipse through the adjacent monitor should work.

Am I nuts to do this in view of the possibility of blowing out the CCDs of a very expensive camcorder, or should I not worry about it?

Many thanks for any ideas.

D

Maybe no seeing it here SW of Denver

[EQ]

I can look directly at the sun - big red ball, not all that bright. Who needs smoked glass when you have smoked air?

80,000+ acre wildfire out of control. Smoke up to 30,000 feet spreading across Colorado to Nebraska to South Dakota (visible on satellite). Completely out of control, nothing we can do but hope for a weather change. They pulled the crews from in front of it, calling it suicidal to fight this thing from in front. Humidities as low as 5%. Winds 25-35 gusting to 45 fanning the fire and keeping hte slurry bombers and tankers from fighting it effectively. Problem is fuel: timber here has less moisture (10%) than kiln dried lumber due to drought.

Peronal note: I worked at the Lockheed rocket engine plant (boosters). And it is in the way of this fire at Waterton Canyon facility. Thats a bad mix: 200 ft wall of flames advancing at 5-10 MPH and tons of rocket fuel in bunkers nearby. Bad combo.

40,000 people evacuated as of 4PM mountain time. Rained ash (like snow flurries) here at my house.

:-/

A few pics from San Jose

[Tugrik]

For any who're curious to see: I pulled out the binocs, a white sheet of paper and the camera to snap off a few frames of the eclipse as seen from the southern part of San Jose, CA.

The pictures can be found here.

Plot of photovoltaic system during eclipse

[Phil Karn]

I logged the power generated by my photovoltaic system during today's eclipse. Since I'm in San Diego where the eclipse reached 80%, the dip is quite noticeable.

The URL is http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/pv/daylife.html