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Ask Slashdot: How Did You Experience The Solar Eclipse?
NASA claims they set a record Monday with 40 million views of their eclipse coverage (12.1 million unique) and more than 2 million simultaneous views. Now Slashdot reader xmas2003 asks: "What did /.'ers do to experience this rare incredibly cool event and how did it turn out?"
SmarterEveryDay Destin gets great geek cred for watching the ISS transit the eclipsed sun [YouTube] while we were fortunate to have an incredible experience on 40 acres of farmland watching the Total Solar Eclipse near Tryon, Nebraska -- here's a complete video of [a darkening crowd watching] the totality event from the middle of nowhere. While the pics/video are cool, the real-life experience of actually being there in person is even 100X better -- highly recommend you try to attend a future total solar eclipse!.
In my town it was cloudy all morning -- though I got a postcard from friends experiencing "the path of totality" in Idaho City. But how about you? How did you experience this week's solar eclipse?
In my town it was cloudy all morning -- though I got a postcard from friends experiencing "the path of totality" in Idaho City. But how about you? How did you experience this week's solar eclipse?
from the other side of the planet, you insensitive clod!
Near centerline, 2 mins 41 seconds of totality.
It was easy finding a location just before the eclipse and getting in. Getting out, on the other hand...11 hours to drive 250 miles to Indianapolis afterwards. I-69 completely jammed.
Great experience except someone decided to start shooting fireworks during totality. It's not like there needed to be anything extra...
Went from NH to NE -- North Platte, in southwest Nebraska, to be precise. (Caught some stops like Niagara Falls and Mount Rushmore -- not to mention, say, the world's largest rocking chair and Wall Drug.) And I have to say that, to my surprise, totality was cooler than I had anticipated. After watching it, headed to Denver airport, where I hit the only traffic of note the entire trip: Denver rush hour.
If you missed this one, try to catch the 2024. Really. Totality is just that cool -- though all too brief.
I visited some family in South Carolina, and some other friends of the family converged there as well. We basically had a little picnic, set up some cameras, and then watched the shrinking Sun with our glasses.
Even at ten minutes prior, it was eerie! Dark as evening, but with the Sun still seventy degrees overhead. I've never experienced conditions like it in my life. The temperature was noticeably cooler, as well.
And then, totality itself! We were on the southern edge of the path, so only about a minute thirty of totality, but my goodness, they should have sent a poet! The sky was as dark as night, but the horizon was lit by the sunlight that made it around the Moon -- not red like a usual sunset, but blue! And of course, the hole in the sky where the Sun used to be.
Even knowing in advance that it would be happening, there are no words to describe the awe we felt. I can hardly begin to understand the panic that people must have felt before we understood what caused them!
Interestingly, because we saw the eclipse from a small farm, we could see the reactions of some non-human animals as well. Chickens went inside their roost during totality (and then came back outside as soon as it was done, no worse for wear), and the gnats all went to ground (and then came back with a vengeance when it was over). We didn't notice any other creatures reactions, so maybe it was over too quickly for them to be concerned. (Incidentally, some neighbors were out of their minds over whether they should get eclipse glasses for their animals...no need to worry, they've been dealing with eclipses for millions of years before we domesticated them.)
Wherever you are in the world, keep your ears open for when the next eclipse is coming near you, and make the effort to see totality -- it's worth it! I'm already looking forward to 2024!
Drove from south central Wisconsin to St. Clair, MO (a small town of 5000 which was on the center line). Friendly folks there, who set aside 7 different areas to view the eclipse (baseball and soccer fields, church properties, or just along the streets.) A police officer stopped by a few times to hand out free glasses to anyone who didn't have them, and there was an EMT vehicle nearby to make sure people were okay (it was 95 most of the day, until the sun went away for a bit...) We had a fantastic time, and met a number of folks from as far away as Albuquerque and somewhere in Texas. Viewing was also great.
- Mike
Not really. I think the biggest drama happened was when apparently some guy near us had a romantic idea to propose to his girlfriend during the totality - and then lost the ring :). Or that at least seemed to be the gist of the "oh crap" discussion that followed.
I'll listen to it when the audio book comes out.
I also had my astronomy filters which gave a nice view, turning the solar disc into a blue color for direct viewing. These were a big hit.
When looking away from the sun, you could see that shadows were fuzzy and odd looking, and sunlight filtering through tree leaves would show thousands of crescents on the ground.
When we hit as close to totality as we were going to get, it was fairly dark. It looked like late evening, but without the reddish color shift of a normal evening sun. A lot of birds started sqwaking, especially some pileated woodpeckers that visit our feeders. An adult was making a lot of noise, my best guess is a parent telling a young one it was time to get home for the evening. Actually got pretty loud.
Then almost like a switch, it started getting much brighter. A pretty enjoyable time. We all chatted for a while longer, then headed back to whatever we were doing before the eclipse.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
We were in the 90% zone for the recent solar eclipse and were entirely unwilling to make the drive to totality.
However, I was intrigued by the various articles that spoke to the idea that you couldn't shoot photos without filters, that cellphones couldn't be used, etc.
So, contrarian that I am, I shot DSLR photos without filters, and cellphone shots as well.
No corona shots (90% zone means the corona was never accessible) but I got some adequate shots, some of which are online here.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Enjoying the near complete silence until my jackass neighbor started blasting "Total Eclipse of the Heart" for way too long.
Yes Google routes you on major roads...
The thing is at this point everyone knows that. So many thousands of people took the back roads. There is a reason they are not major roads, they cannot handle any large volume of backup without huge delays... in some small towns in Nebraska we had a line of cars that took about an hour to go smoke or two.
I was able to mitigate that somewhat by taking dirt farm roads. But they often dead end eventually and you have to get on the minor roads at least to pass through some areas.
Mind you it was better than the major roads still but you shouldn't feel like it's going to make the thing a breeze.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Clear skies but only about 60% total. Observed using a small telescope used in projection-mode (for safe viewing). I also took continuous precision frequency measurements of radio station WWV near Boulder Colorado on a frequency of 10.0 MHz. Did this for 8 hours on the day of the eclipse and the day before (for control). My measurements clearly showed the ionospheric Doppler shifting of the signal from WWV as the moving zone of totality crossed over the radio signal path from WWV to my location. Uploaded almost 1.4 GB of data to the Ham SCI community at zenodo.org.
My wife and I were amazed at the strange lighting effect of the reduced sunlight near maximum (60%). Talk about a pale sun! Many of our garden flowers closed, at least partially, and all the birds seemed to disappear too.
We were planning to go to Nebraska, and specifically to the road (state route 92) that runs through Tryon and hews closely to the centerline, but a deteriorating forecast for that area caused us to make the trek to Unity, Oregon. I am glad to see that the weather was fine in Nebraska (as it was where we were.)
Our reasons for picking both areas were: 1) statistically, a high probability of clear skies in the morning at this time of year; 2) a clear view of the sky (checked using Street View); 3) roads running along the centerline of totality, so we could hope to dodge clouds if we had to; 4) somewhere likely to have a low density of viewers, so that it would be possible to move, if necessary, without being caught in traffic. When switching to Oregon, we also considered wildfire locations and forecast wind direction (the forest service has frequently-updated fire location maps and reports.)
We printed maps showing roads and the path of totality, in case cellphone navigation failed us (which it did, but on account of the location's remoteness, not service overload.)
We were least certain about the density of viewers, but the roads were so empty as we approached our destination that I worried that I had made a huge navigation error!
One thing that only people who've seen totality can understand is that almost seeing a total eclipse (99.x%) is so different from a total eclipse, they should come up with another name for it. For example the difference in ambient light between 99% and 100% is a factor of 10,000. Even 1 minute before totality you'd be tempted to say, "Meh. I've seen this before." Then you hit 100% and scream "Holy #)@* God tore the sun from the sky and replaced it with a portal to another dimension!"
So this is why my wife's trip to Minot with the UW-Green Bay astronomers on Feb 26, 1979 led to her convincing me to go to Antigua on Feb 26, 1998 (1 Saros later) where I asked her to marry me during the second diamond ring while the Montserrat volcano smoldered in the half-light. We planned our honeymoon around the 1999 total eclipse which passed through Europe (rained out in Stuttgart.) And finally planned to take our children and 21 other family members and friends from Wisconsin to the Kentucky Dam Village campground near Paducah. We scouted out the beach, dam, boat launch and considered the Golden Pond Observatory and Planetarium or one of the several other public viewings between Hopkinsville and Carbondale but decided on walking to a clearing at the south edge of the campground where oak trees would provide shade in the time between first contact and totality. We set up a few tarps in the grass (thankfully fire-ants have not yet gotten a solid foothold here but ticks have.) We set up a sun tent for the kids.
My brother-in-law is a professional photographer who brought a Sony DSLR, lens and filter and we found even better equipped astrophotographers within the park and along the dam so even though this was my 4th totality, I didn't feel any pressure to take photos. We considered flying a drone, but we were too near an airport. I considered leaving a CHDK interval timer script, android FP5Cam intervalometer and Wemos D1 mini temperature logger running but these weren't as much of a priority as enjoying it as much as I did the previous 3 totalities. There is only so much you can do in 2 minutes and 20 odd seconds.
The leaves of the oaks cast crescent shadows across the tent and everyone during the partial phases. I'd bought a pack of used cards from the Menominee casino where they had neatly cut holes to mark that the cards were no longer legal for gambling. 52 eclipse projectors for 50 cents! I handed them out to our gang and to our campground neighbors. Totality hit everyone with a wave of wonder. The hot whirring sound of cicadas was replaced with the nocturnal chirp of crickets. My niece's boyfriend asked to look through the telescope during totality. At first I explained that it's too hard to aim (I had no tracker) but then I decided to give it a try so he and I and my niece got a brief glance. I handed binoculars around to a few people.
One of the artists in our group compared it to a weird photoshop filter, a sci-fi movie. "WOW No one told me!" It reminded me of the scene in Contact where Ellie sees something indescribably beautiful that no one else will ever know. This was the most photographed total eclipse in history, drones, DSLRs, iPhones, 4k 60FPS video, VR... and yet I have not found anything that does it justice.
Imagine if sunsets were rare events that only one in every 1000 people had ever witnessed. Describing it would be like explaining the color green to a blind person. Photos of sunsets work for us because nearly everyone has witnessed a sunset but very few have witnessed totality. Ray Bradbury's All summer in a day was published in 1954, just three months before a total solar eclipse would have been visible from Northern Wisconsin, a few hours drive from his native Waukegan, Illinois. Like Ellie in Contact, Margo in this short story has witness
First off, getting up into the path of totality was fine.
We drank a lot the night before. There was a lot of history talk because they're huge nerds.
At the event I set up a quick'n'easy altar with some fancy cloth and a C'thulhu bobble-head. During the eclipse, we got a video of us sacrificing a heart.... of artichoke. So... you're welcome for
And then we road eternal, shiny, and chrome on the Eclipse road! Services were closed. Roads were clogged. We spent hours at a standstill. Now... the weekend before, I decked out my car with temporary peel-off paint and gave it some decals from MadMax. I dressed up as a raider with spikes on some (way oversized) football shoulder-pads, and a facemask, and a metalic arm thingy. We had nerf weapons and I wanted my crew to lean out the windows with the tiki torches as thundersticks, but they weren't up for it, and by the time we switched traffic had picked up. So that didn't happen. Also, the shoulder pads were WAY too big for a long-ass car-ride. And the spikes had a non-negligible risk of tearing up my upholstery, so that got ditched real early.
The 3 hour drive turned into a 6 hour drive and everyone was tired by the end. But with spare guzzoline and plenty of agricola, we survived!
(Also, the peel-off paint works fine.... as long as the coverage is enough. MASK IT, and spray it thick. Otherwise the tiny specks don't rub off nearly as easy as the thick stuff. ugh.)