Anybody else check out the partial solar eclipse?

doctorwho · Post by **doctorwho** » Wed May 23, 2012 2:44 am

Well, I thought it was cool!

Sorry, those were the best I could do with my Olympus Evolt with MacGyvered filters ... and literally at the last minute (I had just returned back home from San Diego, having attended a college graduation on Saturday).

kiramdear · Post by **kiramdear** » Wed May 23, 2012 2:45 am

It was full coronal around these parts.

doctorwho · Post by **doctorwho** » Wed May 23, 2012 2:48 am

kiramdear wrote:It was full coronal around these parts.

Sweet!

Did you enjoy a Corona while watching the corona?

kiramdear · Post by **kiramdear** » Wed May 23, 2012 4:31 am

Actually, it took me by surprise. I had no idea I should expect an eclipse that day, and I found myself walking with Jasmine in our favorite local greenway here in Visitation Valley. I was surprised to notice that the early evening sun filtered through the trees and dotted our path with thousands of little luminous crescents. I remembered that the only other time I observed this phenomenon was in the early Nineties during a total eclipse of the sun. Then we returned home and I went on the net and saw that at that moment, 18:36, the eclipse was total.

We used to make pinhole cameras, well just a card with a hole in it, in school and get a good image that way. But being in the woods is a trippy way to spend an eclipse. The jillions of little crescents are quite astonishing. No way you could not know that something very special is going on.

cjj · Post by **cjj** » Wed May 23, 2012 8:29 am

kiramdear wrote:It was full coronal around these parts.

We had a TOTAL eclipse here!

The whole event was totally eclipsed by clouds...

woodyng · Post by **woodyng** » Wed May 23, 2012 10:58 am

Sunday was beautifully sunny all day until Right on que at 615pm,a massive front of ocean fog blew in over Brookings to obscure the proceedings. Fortunately we and some friends with a set of welder's glasses set off upriver about 5 miles to excape the fog,and were treated to the full monty! The welder glasses made the sunlight appear as a chartreuse green,so that was very cool to see a green eclipse.

8mileshigher · Post by **8mileshigher** » Wed May 23, 2012 4:29 pm

Cool pictures, Gary.
Nice story you relayed there, Kira.

A question for the scientific folks ----- when the moon eclipses the sun, is that the only time that the dark side of the moon gets sunlight ? Or does the dark side get sun struck through the process of other planetary rotations more regularly, than these once in a decade eclipses ?

cjj · Post by **cjj** » Wed May 23, 2012 6:43 pm

8mileshigher wrote:Cool pictures, Gary.
Nice story you relayed there, Kira.

A question for the scientific folks ----- when the moon eclipses the sun, is that the only time that the dark side of the moon gets sunlight ? Or does the dark side get sun struck through the process of other planetary rotations more regularly, than these once in a decade eclipses ?

There really is no dark side of the moon (unless you count Pink Floyd). As the moon rotates around the earth, it gets hit on all sides by the sun every 28 days. Every full moon, the side that faces earth is in full sunlight, 14 days later at the new moon, the other side is in full sunlight. When you see "half" moons, both the near side and far sides are half way in sunlight.

The interesting thing about the moon's orbit is that it's rotational period is exactly the same as the time it takes to travel around the earth, which is why we only see one side of the moon at all times.

When an eclipse happens, the moon just so happens to line up with the sun and cause a shadow to hit the earth. The moon ALWAYS eclipses the sun, continuously, if you happen to be in the right spot, which is often somewhere in space and not on the earth's surface. You just have to get the moon between you and the sun.

Now, this last eclipse was an "annular" eclipse, meaning that the moon did not completely cover the sun, it's "apparent" size in the sky was smaller than the apparent size of the sun. Why? Well, the moon's orbit is not a perfect circle (it's an ellipse - all orbits are elliptical, an oval shape), and at one side of the orbit the moon is closer to the earth than at the other side. The earth's orbit around the sun does the same thing, so the sizes of both the moon and sun in the sky change depending on where they are in their orbits. When things happen to line up just right, you get a total eclipse where the moon's size is large enough to completely cover the sun...

8mileshigher · Post by **8mileshigher** » Wed May 23, 2012 8:08 pm

cjj wrote:There really is no Dark Side of the Moon (unless you count Pink Floyd).

As a matter of fact, its all dark !!

= = = = = = = =
CJ -- thanks for your good explanation of the science of it all !!

jps · Post by **jps** » Wed May 23, 2012 8:23 pm

All this talk of the Earth and Sun and Moon.............

jimk · Post by **jimk** » Wed May 23, 2012 9:39 pm

It happened so near sunset here that it couldn't really be fully appreciated, unless you happened to be standing atop Frasier Hall, the tallest point on the university campus.
JimK

doctorwho · Post by **doctorwho** » Wed May 23, 2012 11:51 pm

cjj wrote:... The interesting thing about the moon's orbit is that it's rotational period is exactly the same as the time it takes to travel around the earth, which is why we only see one side of the moon at all time s....

This phenomenon is known as spin-orbit coupling. I find it fascinating that it happens on both atomic and planetary scales.

rickenbrother · Post by **rickenbrother** » Thu May 24, 2012 9:34 am

Cool pics! Thanks for sharing, Gary!

rickenbrother · Post by **rickenbrother** » Sat May 26, 2012 2:47 pm

Any one who would like to see a couple more pics of the eclipse and some other very well taken space photos with a nice telescope/camera setup, check out this link:

Astro Pix

These pics are taken by my friend and co-worker, Dr. Ron U.

doctorwho · Post by **doctorwho** » Sun May 27, 2012 1:26 am

Now those are really great pictures! Thanks for the link, Joey!

Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum