I don't get the Eclipse madness!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I recommend Annie Dillard’s essay Total Eclipse. It’s a great read and captures what all the fuss is about. She says something like, seeing a partial eclipse vs. totality is like kissing a man vs. marrying him.

Wait, what? That doesn't work in any way, good or bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't fully understand how some people are SO into it that they'll travel, pull their kids out of school, and things like that. But I'll walk outside with my eclipse glasses to check it out--if we're even able to see it.

I remember seeing the one in 1994 and it was pretty cool. My school gave out glasses and all of the students went onto the football field to see it.

My kid’s school is taking the kids to an area of totality ( we are about 1.5 hours away). I am taking my kid separately because I want to share it with him and because I think the traffic after will be appalling. I don’t want him stuck on a bus for many hours. I got a hotel room and we will drive back the next morning in time for school.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't either. During the last one I did stop what I was doing (shopping) for a few minutes and kind of check it out while trying not to burn my eyeballs and then continued on my way.

I would not go out of my way or spend any money to experience the sun disappearing for a short time. It actually disappears where I live every single night for hours.

you sound like a lot of fun

Thanks, yes, I am a lot of fun.

Thankfully the people in my life don't judge me based on my feelings about eclipses. We have some other stuff going on.

And yet, here you are posting about your feelings about eclipses.
Have you ever seen one in totality? Or do you just want to tell us your feelings about looking up at the sun without solar glasses on while you were shopping?
If you were at all curious about things you don't understand, you might look discover that the sun doesn't "disappear", it is masked by the moon. It's kinda different from the sun setting.
Is this really that hard to understand?

Not the PP, but people like you are exhausting. Why is it so hard for you to accept that others don’t share your same feelings about everything? Or, even if they do find it cool, not enough to drop everything for a couple days to invest the time and energy to go see it.

I don't GAS what other people do but this was so stupid that I had to respond:
"I would not go out of my way or spend any money to experience the sun disappearing for a short time. It actually disappears where I live every single night for hours."
You have to admit that statement is moronic, right?

It's moronic to you because you are a moron with no sense of humor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't fully understand how some people are SO into it that they'll travel, pull their kids out of school, and things like that. But I'll walk outside with my eclipse glasses to check it out--if we're even able to see it.

I remember seeing the one in 1994 and it was pretty cool. My school gave out glasses and all of the students went onto the football field to see it.

I find astronomy and natural phenomena fascinating. Nature is beautiful and interesting to me. So seeing the sun, moon and light behaving in very rare ways is interesting.

Your first paragraph describes what I think about people who do that for music. The people who spend money to travel to other cities whether it is older music like the Rolling Stones to newer music like Taylor Swift. It's just music. You can hear it on the radio. You can see the movie. Why would you need to travel to another city, spend a fortune on travel, hotels, and hundreds of dollars for tickets just to see someone sing music that you listen to every day on Spotify or Pandora. Or those that do the same to see a sports event. The idea of spending thousands of dollars to travel, pay huge amounts for tickets to see a sporting event that you can watch on TV, boggles the mind.

At least eclipses are much more rare than a concert or a sporting event.

What it boils down to is that people have different interests. I have a big interest in natural science and I want to teach that to my kids.

[Anonymous]

Well, it won't be very impressive here in the DMV - only in the path of totality will you actually experience true twilight darkness and that is completely awe-inspiring. I wasn't sure what the big deal was in 2017 until I experienced it myself. Now I really, really wish I was going to be somewhere in totality for this one. I remember when I came back home to the DMV in 2017, everyone here was so unimpressed with the eclipse and couldn't understand how wild and amazing being in totality was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I recommend Annie Dillard’s essay Total Eclipse. It’s a great read and captures what all the fuss is about. She says something like, seeing a partial eclipse vs. totality is like kissing a man vs. marrying him.

EXACTLY. There is no comparison.

[Anonymous]

The jealous crew is out in full force.

[Anonymous]

I'm pretty sure there was one last year. It wasn't exciting then. People are nuts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm pretty sure there was one last year. It wasn't exciting then. People are nuts.

The one last year was an annular eclipse. That is when the moon is at it's furthest distance from the Earth. In that one, you get a much larger halo effect of the sun and it isn't as impressive. It looks kind of like this:




What will happen on Monday is a total solar eclipse. The moon is closer to the earth and will block out much more of the sun. In the total eclipse, it gets darker, more like full dusk rather than early sunset. The animals and insects get confused and you'll hear anywhere from silence to odd patterns normally not heard. In the middle of the afternoon, it will feel like the period just after sunset when it's getting near dark. The distance means that you will have more light diffusion and get more "special effects" rather than just a donut of light. You will get more light phenomena like these:

[Anonymous]

My son and I watched the partial a few years ago.It was cool, especially when the birds stopped singing and rabbits ventured out thinking it was dusk in early to mid afternoon (don't remember the exact timeframe).

CNN made a dumb goof today though:

“(P)recise eclipse prediction has brought new attention to a tiny but real uncertainty about the size of the Sun,” NASA’s statement reads. “Uncertainty in the Earth’s rotation can also affect eclipse predictions on this level.”

Guinan explained that it’s extremely difficult to determine an exact measurement of the sun’s size because “it’s a fuzzy surface.”

He noted that the sun could be slightly enlarged right now because the our star is currently going through a period of maximum magnetic activity, which “could cause the sun to swell out a bit.”

But the uncertainty accounts for only a few hundred feet, while the moon is millions of miles across.

If that were the case, we would have been sucked into the moon eons ago by its gravity.

[Anonymous]

I think there is prob more hoopla this time because there are enough people who happened to be in the path of totality that talked it up big time.

So those of us that didn't choose to travel or couldn't may have a bit of FOMO.

The only way to really know if its worth it is to experience the partial one time and totality the next. In any event, may not be everyone' thing but its kind of fun its happened twice in a decade within this country.

For all those travelling - I hope you have clear skies.

[Anonymous]

I live in Maine so we’re in big time eclipse madness. I’m excited! I’m going to drive the couple hours to get to the totality zone but try to stay away from the towns that are in the dead center if it because sounds like madness/crowds etc. I mean it’s free, it’s rare, and forecast is clear skies so sounds like will be an amazing day for it. Sounds great to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Same. It gets dark/ cold with storms. No big deal.

In an eclipse it gets dark and the stars come out in daytime, without a cloud in the sky (hopefully). Not at all like a storm.

[Anonymous]

I care more about when Betelgeuse might blow up and that might be a 1,000 years from now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm 44. I feel like these things have happened pretty frequently in my lifespan, yet the buildup around them is crazy! I have no interest in participating in any of this - pulling my kids out of school to go to the Smithsonian, for example? (And I'm totally a parent that would pull them for stuff, I just don't get this!) I guess I sort of have some FOMO, but really...why is this a big deal?

I think it’s cool to see. But didn’t we just have one in 2019 or something? That was also cool for a few minutes. Got the obligatory btdt pics