The highest point near us is where the giant water tower
with its red and white checkered top sits up on a ridge north of the city. We went there about 7:00 pm Sunday May 20,
2012 to get a perfect clear view of the western sky to “watch” the partial
annular solar eclipse. We had our cameras and our card stock paper with
pinholes in it. For part of the 40 minutes or so that we “watched” there were
cloud formations covering the sun but we did get to “see” the chunk missing out
of the sun for a time. We didn’t actually look directly at the sun of course
but used the camera and our pinpoint holes to see it indirectly. My photos only
captured the moody looking clouds but Steve got several interesting ones that
show the crescent shape of the sun. During the partial eclipse you hardly can
tell it is happening unless you know in advance. The lighting only shifts
slightly dimmer to our eyes.
When we were on our
road trip in January we stopped at one of The National Solar Observatory sites
in New Mexico and took a self-guided tour of the facility there that has
several solar telescopes and also living quarters for the scientists who come
to the mountain to work there. http://www.nso.edu/
Click on the link to the NSO website and see current images. Other facilities
are in Arizona and Hawaii. They monitor the corona and sunspot activity and a
bunch of other stuff.
The next solar eclipse will be a total eclipse where the
moon completely covers the sphere of the sun for a few minutes causing darkness.
That occurs when the moon is slightly nearer the earth in its elliptical orbit
so covers more of the sun. It will occur across the US and the totality will
pass through Nebraska and Wyoming. The date is August 21, 2017!! See this link. http://en.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_August_21,_2017
Don’t miss it! Our grandchildren will be old enough then to
get a little astronomy and science lesson.
One of the coolest images is where the sun’s light shining
through the pin holes of light in the foliage of a tree during the eclipse
casts a multitude of crescent images in the shadow it makes on the ground. So make
sure you take the kiddos to a park with trees. Go to this link to see what I am
talking about. http://www.petapixel.com/2012/05/21/crescent-shaped-projections-through-tree-leaves-during-the-solar-eclipse/
Lou
It's amazing to see such a significant part of the sun covered by the moon and yet to notice so little difference in the way things appear around us. The combination of the eye and the brain works to compensate so well that we can hardly notice. The links listed in L's post are quite fascinating. I can't wait to see the total eclipse in 2017 (Lord willing).
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see some pictures! We missed it, and I wasn't sure how to see it anyway, I remembered something about paper and holes but didn't know what to do after that! ha ha....sooo 5 years from now it should be fun to show the kiddos!
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