Chicken N. Backpacks Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What I find cool about eclipses is that the moon > just happens to be about the exact size of the sun > when viewed from Earth and covers it perfectly.
:) I'm going to ding you a bit on that. Good-naturedly, of course.
To begin with, "about" and "exact" don't really go together. In your sentence, or in reality.
In fact, the angular size of the moon and sun from earth are never, ever exactly the same size -- because neither one is an exact sphere, and they vary from an exact sphere in different ways. Then there's the moon's orbit around the earth, which makes its angular size bigger and smaller during the course of its orbit, and the earth's orbit around the sun, which makes the sun bigger and smaller during the course of our orbit.
I know the "popular" press loves to say things like "the moon and the sun are the exact same size!" But they're not. When the moon goes in front of the sun and it's *bigger* than the sun's size, we get a total eclipse. When it's *smaller,* we get an annular eclipse. There isn't a time when the shape of the moon exactly covers the shape of the sun perfectly. Doesn't happen. Never has and never will. It's always a little bigger, or a little smaller.
Not that knowing the above makes seeing a total eclipse any less fun...but facts are facts :)
I dont care either no matter how many people try to hype it. Im actually kind of pissed that all roads may be deadlocked because i will most likely have places to go that day.
And when I lived in an area where the roads would be closed and I had advanced notice, I planned accordingly, so I could still have a good day while not dragging others down.
I live in a place--as do most people--where the earth totally eclipses the sun for several hours every day. The stars come out, animals do weird things, people watch TV and have sex. We call it "night."
This August 21st thingy is gonna' be a total snoozer.
I think it's interesting in that it is always interesting to be a witness to some historical event. That being said, I wasn't interested enough to buy special glasses or drive somewhere with more of an eclipse. I can watch it on TV.
I was working on a forest fire between Salem OR and Sisters OR, I opted out and came home last Wednesday.
Camp was where full eclipse will last 1 minute 25 seconds.
Too many crazy people are anticipated and with roads/trails closed because of the fires there are going to be a bunch of pissed off people, being in hours long traffic jams isn't going to improve their disposition.
We'll get a 94% coverage where I live, that'll be good enough.
Young. I dug out my old telescope with the solar filter from storage,and tomorrow I'll drive down to the path of totality. May as well get all out of this life that we can, I think.
What??? It's gonna be light and then get dark and then get light again. Betcha never saw THAT happen.
I was all into it last fall, even made plans to drive 2 hours into Western Kentucky and had hotel reservations. Then things happened last week that took me away from work, and I heard about how crowded the roads were going to be and decided that our 94% will do. In face, it's getting real quiet in here so I think everyone is already outside. We don't have max coverage for another hour, I'll check it out then. It really has lost its luster. I can say I remember the day.
My ex's friend bought glasses and my ex ran out here from work so our son could see it. I could tell it was getting darker here in the house while I was working. Then when my ex called, I went outside. What I loved is how cool it got instead of the hot day it turned out to be. I looked through the glasses several times. It didn't get that dark here, but I thought it was impressive. I'm in Northern Utah, so we got about 91% or so.