Total Solar Eclipse-info for those of us who do care
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Anonymous
| For those of us in the DC Metro area on August 21st, assuming good weather, what will we be able to see and about what time? |
Anonymous
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I'm in Richmond, we are supposed to be around 86%, I'm excited.
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Anonymous
| I think it's around 2:41 or so. |
Anonymous
| Yep, about 241. I heard it supposed to be really good in Kentucky |
Anonymous
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Simulator:
https://eclipsemega.movie/simulator You need to drive down to TN/SC for total eclipse. |
Anonymous
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Here's another link - it's really cool, you can input any location and it'll simulate what you'll see during the eclipse from that location.
https://eclipsemega.movie/simulator?lat=40.7127837&lng=-74.00594130000002 |
Anonymous
Or head west. http://fox59.com/2017/08/01/get-ready-a-total-solar-eclipse-is-happening-later-this-month/ |
Anonymous
Plug in Charleston, SC for fun. |
Anonymous
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Maps showing the path & areas that will have a total eclipse.
https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/eclipse-maps 
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Anonymous
| My home town is in the middle of the total eclipse. They are so excited. |
Anonymous
| I'm planning on taking my kids outside to our lawn or a park. One of these days I will go outside around 2:40 to make sure we can see the sun from our house. We are in Fairfax County. I still need to buy the glasses. |
Anonymous
Where do you buy the glassses?0 |
Anonymous
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Some libraries are handing them out:
http://www.wusa9.com/news/eclipse/how-you-can-get-free-solar-eclipse-viewing-glasses/452951976 |
Anonymous
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Okay, I'm the DCUM guy that works at NASA at the place that can't be named (thanks to the spamming preschool that shares the name). Although I don't work on the science side of the house, I did attend a presentation on this by one of the solar physicists yesterday which provided a lot of good information.
First for safety, the sun is amazingly bright (duh!) and basically just before totality (when the sun itself is completely blocked by the moon), and just after totality, the sun will be too strong to look at directly. And this only applies to those areas in the 70 mile swath that reaches 100% totality. If you are anywhere else in the US, you will see between 60% and 99% blockage of the sun by the moon. Unfortunately, human eyes can only tolerate less than 1% of the sun's light intensity, so basically unless you are in the exact path of totality you will need some eye cover. The basic guideline is if you look and it hurts your eyes, look away and find better eye coverage. Your body's defense mechanism (in this case making your eyes hurt or water) will help you determine (if you have no other gauge) if the sun is too strong. As for eye protection, it doesn't have to be fancy. I just picked up some of the ones that look like 3-D paper glasses, but instead of the cellophane lenses, they have special lenses that are designed to block the light. You can test them on normal days by holding them up and looking at the sun. It should make the sun at full intensity look like an orange tinted moon. One key with the glasses is that most of them only cover a small (about 1" x 2") area. If the sun is up with no blockage (e.g. clouds), then it will cover the direct view, but you might have some bleeding light/glare around the edges. I recommend getting like a baseball hat or other brimmed hat to help cover light bleed around the lenses. You can get them a ton of places on-line and don't need anything fancy, but you want to make sure that they are marked as ISO-certified for solar viewing and that they say on them safe for direct solar viewing. So, what to expect to see? You will slowly see the moon approach the position of the sun and then cross the path of the sun. As it approaches the sun, it will become dark (essentially you are seeing the moon backlit by the sun). If you are in the totality zone, when the moon gets directly in front of the sun, the moon will block the whole body of the sun but you will still see the corona of the sun, which is essentially the atmosphere that surrounds the sun. There are some pretty cool effects as gas and light radiate out from the sun. Once the light of the sun is blocked, then you get to see the special effects in the corona, which is normally not visible due to the intensity of the light from the sun. Note that most of the effects are not clearly visible to the naked eye and you would need a telescope or high powered camera lens to see them. This is a pretty good video of what you'll can expect to see (this is from the most recent eclipse which happened in Micronesia last year). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWvPQBTvtfc Totality will last somewhere between 1:50 (one minute, 50 seconds) to 2:40 based on your location. There are many resources on-line that will report when the totality reaches each location and how long the duration will be at that location. Now, if you are in a location that has 100% totality, then once the moon reaches totality, then you can take off your solar viewing glasses or you won't see much of anything. You can view the total eclipse with the naked eye, but be prepared for when the moon shifts away from the center of the sun to put the glasses back on. Don't worry, your natural body reactions will tell you when to put the glasses on. What other effects are there? So it turns out that nature and animals don't really know what an eclipse is but they will react as they do anytime the sun is blocked and light diminishes to darkness, e.g. every night. So, first there will be a drop in ambient temperature of the area. It's not exact but most records of other eclipses suggest a drop in temp of anywhere in the 5-20 degree range. Additionally, the animals will react. Crickets in the area will start to chirp. You may have birds that retreat from the air to nearby trees. Animals like deer, squirrels, etc may stop and look up and then retreat into trees like they do at night. Scientists are fascinated by the changes that occur so quickly in such a short amount of time. Someone on another thread asked what was so special about this eclipse. There are a few things. First, eclipses happen all the time. At least once per month, the moon and the sun cross the sky at the same place, but because the orbits of the moon and the sun are on different planes, they don't always intersect such that the moon crosses between the Earth and the sun in just the right position to block the sun. Roughly every 18 months, the two line up so that somewhere on the Earth the moon totally blocks the sun. However, since about 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by water, often the eclipse happens somewhere not very accessible. As the next major total eclipse will happen in December 2021 in Antartica, that isn't the easiest place to go and see the event. So they only happen every couple of years. More info about the frequency of eclipses here: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/how-often-solar-eclipse.html. But what makes this one significant is that it crosses the entire contiguous US from coast to coast. Additionally, the US is the only nation on the planet that will experience totality. The last time a total eclipse traveled the US from coast to coast was 1918. There has never been another total eclipse that only made landfall on one nation for its duration. Also, there are 12.2 million people who live within the path of totality and nearly 100 million who live within a day's drive of the totality. All of the US will experience at least a partial eclipse of 60% or more. These are unprecedented. As for traffic, according to the guy here at NASA, the solar physics team has been in close contact with several other groups including major traffic centers to determine the impact. They are estimating that around 10-25 million people will be trying to travel to the path of totality. With nearly 100 million people living within range, and standard traffic even from those not trying to see the eclipse, the traffic mavens have said this is likely to be a major traffic day. Treat it much like you would a major holiday travel conditions and allow extra time to travel anywhere in the region of totality. From the other thread, the person who was thinking of just “driving down the day of the event” to see it would probably need to leave before 4:00am to make it for the approximately 2:42 pm event, assuming travel time of around 6-7 hours. |
Anonymous
| Hey, thanks NASA guy! |