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Solar Eclipse visible in U.S today.

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Sweetleaf
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21 Aug 2017, 6:47 pm

Kitty4670 wrote:
I don't know much about the Eclipse, I know the sun goes dark, why? How long does it last?


Well it lasted a few hours for the entire thing.

As for why its because sometimes the orbit of the moon and our planet aligns to where the moon is in front of the sun, and thus it looks like the moon covers the sun. There may be more technical details then that, but that is basically what happens.


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jrjones9933
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21 Aug 2017, 8:39 pm

I enjoyed the crescent shadows. I didn't feel like traveling to totality. It was pretty cool.


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21 Aug 2017, 9:20 pm

I will put it this way from my experience, not meaning sound too cynical. If I had been out for a a regular walk, not knowing there was an ellipse, I wouldn't have been aware it was happening. The sun was still way too bright to look at it for more than a second and it pretty much looked the same as it always does.



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21 Aug 2017, 9:29 pm

I was in NYC, where there was only a 71% eclipse.

If Ezra's family drove down to Oregon, they would have had access to the "zone of totality."

The sky turned noticeably darker here in NYC---but it wasn't even as dark as what can occur during a thunderstorm.



beady
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21 Aug 2017, 9:42 pm

Drove a little ways to nearly the very center of the path of totality. There were some fluffy clouds that came and went
near the beginning but then it was perfectly clear. Totality lasted over two minutes and was totally amazing. The light wasn't just dimmed but was hazy and hard to focus. The sky was almost dark, the leaves shadows were crescent shaped and appeared doubled, the sun was completely obliterated except for the corona, and the temperature dropped significantly. Really glad I went!

It was so distinct that you couldn't have ignored nor missed that something was happening out of the ordinary.



Last edited by beady on 21 Aug 2017, 9:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

EzraS
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21 Aug 2017, 9:45 pm

No we stayed home. Through the welder's glass I could only see a very thin crescent of the sun. Glancing at the sun with bare eyes it looked the same glaring bright as usual. It was about a minute of, yeah that's cool.



Last edited by EzraS on 21 Aug 2017, 9:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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21 Aug 2017, 9:47 pm

I couldn't even see the stupid sun, much less the eclipse. There were too many clouds in the way!


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kraftiekortie
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21 Aug 2017, 9:49 pm

In Seattle, it was a 91.9% eclipse, which peaked at 10:20 AM, Seattle time.



EzraS
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21 Aug 2017, 9:58 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
In Seattle, it was a 91.9% eclipse, which peaked at 10:20 AM, Seattle time.


It looked like 95% or more to me. There was just a very thin sliver of sun visible (through the very dark lens) around 10:20-21. So it was cool. Just not OMG! cool.



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22 Aug 2017, 2:53 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
I was in NYC, where there was only a 71% eclipse.

If Ezra's family drove down to Oregon, they would have had access to the "zone of totality."

The sky turned noticeably darker here in NYC---but it wasn't even as dark as what can occur during a thunderstorm.



it got pretty dark where we were and it was like someone put a big shade over the sun. I tried to capture it on phone but it was too bright because you couldn't tell in the photo.


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22 Aug 2017, 10:42 am

It was 70% here, but I was taking a nap when it happened. Even if I was awake, I probably wouldn't have looked at it that much because I didn't want to hurt my eyes.


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22 Aug 2017, 6:55 pm

I made the trip to Madras OR. to see this once-in-a-lifetime event. the eclipse of the century in terms of its near-universal observability all across America. the difference between totality and almost totality is like the difference between pregnant and almost pregnant. @totality it suddenly got to be about as dark as twilight, or about 9:30 at night in the summer. cool! 8)



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22 Aug 2017, 7:04 pm

I'm so envious of all you guys in the States. Nothing this spectacular is ever visible in the UK because we nearly always have too much cloud-cover. This place sucks monkey's balls.



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22 Aug 2017, 7:07 pm

auntblabby wrote:
I made the trip to Madras OR. to see this once-in-a-lifetime event. the eclipse of the century in terms of its near-universal observability all across America. the difference between totality and almost totality is like the difference between pregnant and almost pregnant. @totality it suddenly got to be about as dark as twilight, or about 9:30 at night in the summer. cool! 8)


Awesome! :D We only got a partial here, we were just a bit too out of the path of it to get a total eclipse. But what we did get was pretty neat. :mrgreen:


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22 Aug 2017, 7:25 pm

auntblabby wrote:
I made the trip to Madras OR. to see this once-in-a-lifetime event. the eclipse of the century in terms of its near-universal observability all across America. the difference between totality and almost totality is like the difference between pregnant and almost pregnant. @totality it suddenly got to be about as dark as twilight, or about 9:30 at night in the summer. cool! 8)

I think you're probably right. However, my ride was acting all weird and criticizing me for asking when we were coming back. He has some problem with me, apparently with my way of having autism. It makes me want to avoid him if I'm having a mystical experience. I'll hope to be in a better situation, and make more of an effort in 7 years.


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auntblabby
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22 Aug 2017, 8:07 pm

jrjones9933 wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
I made the trip to Madras OR. to see this once-in-a-lifetime event. the eclipse of the century in terms of its near-universal observability all across America. the difference between totality and almost totality is like the difference between pregnant and almost pregnant. @totality it suddenly got to be about as dark as twilight, or about 9:30 at night in the summer. cool! 8)

I think you're probably right. However, my ride was acting all weird and criticizing me for asking when we were coming back. He has some problem with me, apparently with my way of having autism. It makes me want to avoid him if I'm having a mystical experience. I'll hope to be in a better situation, and make more of an effort in 7 years.

so did you not get to see it, or you got to see it but the experience was marred by this man? in any case, 7 years is plenty of time to prepare for the next one in texas! :) [that one will travel from latin America up into Canada in a roughly 60-mile-wide band of totality].