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2017 Eclipse


Deepwater6

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Don't envy me too much Dr. It took me a traffic riddled ten hours down from PA to Tennessee and 9 hours back.

 

Where were you viewing from?

 

 

 

Wow - that's what I call a very long eclipse, if you include the journey. I'm in Tenerife, where the eclipse was just starting at sunset. I saw it from our garden, where we can see the sun set over the sea. At least our horizon is as low as it gets.

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I took photos through my glasses every 10 minutes and put them into a movie. Totality here by Portland OR reported as 99.4%.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrXmtB2x9uE

Cool video T,ya know I tried to get some shots through the glasses, but I couldn't make it work. I was using my I-phone not a camera which was probably part of the problem. My buddy was able to get some shots on my phone though, through the eye-piece of his monster scope equipped with a sun lens.

 

Don't think it would have mattered much if I had a camera or phone though. when totality arrived I literally dropped my phone and stood there with my mouth agape, completely awestruck. Other than witnessing child birth and seeing my children take their first gasp of air and make their first sound in this world, the totality was the most amazing thing I've ever seen.

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Deepwater, I am so glad to see  you say that the moon was actually lit up on its entire facing  surface - facing us, I mean,  because that is what I kept thinking it should be.  Perhaps - and I am not sure of this - because the moon was not actually covering the entire face of the sun.  It only seemed to us to be doing so because of the distance between the two.

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Deepwater, I am so glad to see  you say that the moon was actually lit up on its entire facing  surface - facing us, I mean,  because that is what I kept thinking it should be.  Perhaps - and I am not sure of this - because the moon was not actually covering the entire face of the sun.  It only seemed to us to be doing so because of the distance between the two.

I've been thinking about this a lot since the event myself. To be completely honest with you I thought something had gone cosmically wrong when totality was achieved. For a second or two it looked as though the moon was going to disintegrate. Of course after my eyes focused and I could see the brilliant moon disk was still there, it had just been completely enveloped by the suns over-glare.

 

The moons orbit is slightly elliptical and the view I saw may have been different from someone on the other side of the country due to Sun/Moon direction and distance. The weird part about all of this is, I'm having trouble finding a picture of the moons face radiating this brilliant blue-white light. I saw an image of it on one of the science channels I watch. A picture out West where it appeared that way, but I cannot find a still photo of it. Most of the photos depict the event as looking like what Turtle's video shows. (which was a good idea)

 

Like I said I dropped everything in my hands as myself and everyone around us just shouted and gasped briefly then stood there mesmerized. the audio part of it was a little like watching/hearing a car accident happen with a group of people. I haven't had time to go through all my photos, but If I can find something like it I'll post it.

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Absolutely incredible, crazy incredible. watched from Tennessee in a park near a lake. I expected totality would bring darkened skies, along with the crickets suddenly starting to chirp and the stars coming out. (which it all did}, but, I figured the moon would look like a dark disk with the suns atmosphere creating a slight halo around the outside of it.

 

It was not like that at all, the entire moon lit up like a brilliant white disk and looking more like a sparkling white dwarf star. The brilliant white fire from the sun's corona seemed to envelope the whole moon from all sides with a light similar to one created by a welders spark.....incredible!!

I suspect you might have seen planetshine, specifically earthshine in this case. It may not be seen from all places because clouds can have a focusing effect which reflects the light more directly back toward its source.

 

Still, to say the entire face of the Moon was 'lit up like a brilliant white disk' strikes me as an illusory impression on your part. Did you see the craters and mare? If not, then the Moon's face was not lit up as you think you saw. I can find no mention or photos of the effect you describe nor any mention of earthshine during an eclipse. :shrug:

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https://www.google.com/search?q=photos+glowing+eclipse&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1vOe6rfPVAhVo04MKHQgzBKIQ7AkINA&biw=1366&bih=618#imgrc=mmv6hMkLg-8rCM:

 

I'm forced to agree Turtle, I can't find any pictures depicting what the brilliant moon looked like, or what I thought It looked like that day. The scary part is I gave up drinking years ago so if I have snapped my cracker we'll have to chalk it up to old-timers Cuckoo disease I suppose. :kuku:   However it had been a long few days leading up to the event. I had been out in the sweltering humid Tennessee heat for hours so I can't rule out the case for it being an illusion. 

 

The above art, especially the first photo on the upper left which shows almost a roiling surface though not as bright as what I thought I saw looks similar to me.  The planet shine theory seems plausible and some of the photo's on your link resemble my recollection. 

 

Never the less I have no way to be sure of what it looked like that day from my position, but I can always attempt to make the next eclipse on Earth to compare. Haven't looked it up yet, but does anyone know off the top of their head when the next eclipse will take place on Earth or in North America?  8) 

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It is not possible for the moon's face to be lit during a solar eclipse.  I don't understand what you are claiming.

I'm certainly not claiming the moon itself lit up, from what I found reading up on it, along with the examples given by Turtle, DrKrettin and OceanBreeze I believe it was one of those phenomenon's that made it look like what I described.  Again, If you add in the fact that heat and humidity were extremely high and I spent hours baking in the sun for most of the day, who knows, it could all have been an illusion. Either way that's what my brain took in, it was incredible to see, and I'm glad I got that one off the bucket list.

 

As luck would have it the next one is only 7yrs away and this one will be passing in parts of PA so I shouldn't have to drive 10hrs to catch it. Another bonus for the next eclipse is the peak time. The 2017 peak time was roughly 2 to 2:30 minutes, parts of this one will have peaks over 4 minutes. The article attached has some of the major cities the next one will pass by if you're interested.

 

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/21/us/next-total-solar-eclipse-2024/

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