Oct 23 - partial solar eclipse over North America

[lpetrich]

Partial Solar Eclipse, October 23, 2014 | Sky & Telescope

Nowhere will this eclipse of the Sun be total. But as the map below shows, for most of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, the Sun will be partially eclipsed. For this event, the farther west and north you are the better. In the American West the entire eclipse happens while the Sun is still fairly high in the afternoon sky. In most of the eastern half of the U.S. and Canada, the eclipse is still in progress at sunset — offering dramatic photo opportunities if you can find a low western horizon. Along a line from the Florida Panhandle through Michigan, the Sun sets right when the eclipse reaches its maximum depth.

East of that line, the Sun will set after the partial eclipse begins but before it reaches maximum. New England misses out altogether.

The farther north you are, the deeper the partial eclipse will become. In San Diego, for instance, the Moon’s silhouette will reach 43% of the way across the Sun’s disk at mid-eclipse (3:32 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time). In Vancouver the silhouette will extend 66% of the way across (at 2:57 p.m. PDT). For precise local times for many cities and towns, and much else, see the NASA Eclipse Site.

That site: NASA - Eclipses During 2014


How to observe it? The Sky and Telescope article discusses some ways to do so. A simple and safe way is to make a pinhole camera. Here is how to make a very simple one. Take some cardboard or some aluminum foil and punch a hole in it. You will see an image projected on a surface on the other side from the source:

Sun --- sheet with a hole in it -- projected-image surface

Some parts of North America will be clouded over, but you can still watch the eclipse at a site like Live Telescope & Astronomy Shows of Stars & the Cosmos • Slooh.


Nearly three years from now will be an even bigger one. August 21, 2017 — Total Solar Eclipse It will go Oregon - Idaho - Wyoming - Nebraska - Kansas - Missouri - Illinois - Kentucky - Tennessee - North Carolina - Georgia - South Carolina

 

[Uwe]

A new thing I invented: use low power reading glasses to project an image of the sun. It's like using a magnifying glass to burn ants, only you're enlarging the image instead of magnifying it. +1.0 glasses have a 1 meter focal length, better (bigger image) is a +0.5 (https://www.speert.com/reading-glas...ngpower=0.50&keywords=Mens&sort=pricelow2high)

 

[Earl IV]

I use a welding helmet.

You can stare at the sun all day long through one of those.

 

[bleubird]

Kool! should be about 68% where I am.

Or I could fly to Fairbanks to see 80% on my days off,Not.

 

[Bomb#20]

Partial Solar Eclipse, October 23, 2014 | Sky & Telescope

The farther north you are, the deeper the partial eclipse will become. In San Diego, for instance, the Moon’s silhouette will reach 43% of the way across the Sun’s disk at mid-eclipse (3:32 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time). In Vancouver the silhouette will extend 66% of the way across (at 2:57 p.m. PDT). For precise local times for many cities and towns, and much else, see the NASA Eclipse Site.

And here I am in Seattle! 64%! Awesome!

Oh, wait. Seattle.

I'll bet it's raining in Vancouver too.

 

[bleubird]

Damn!Cloudy.

 

[lpetrich]

I saw it yesterday. I live in the Pacific Northwest, which was clouded over. But at about 2:45 - 3:00 PM PDT, at local maximum eclipse, there was a break in the lower clouds, and I could see the Sun through the upper clouds. It was rather fuzzy-looking, but I could see a bite out of it from the north. That "bite" was, of course, the Moon getting in the way, and right where one would expect it to be.

I also watched it at Welcome to the Slooh Community Observatory to explore the cosmos and at Official Site: Griffith Observatory Los Angeles, CA. One could also have watched it from NASA Television | NASA.


Some upcoming eclipses, all total:

NASA - Lunar Eclipse Page
2015 Apr 04 -- 12:01:24 GMT -- Asia, Aus., Pacific, Americas
2015 Sep 28 -- 02:48:17 GMT -- E Pacific, Americas, Europe, Africa, W Asia

NASA - Solar Eclipse Page
2015 Mar 20 -- 09:46:47 GMT -- N Atlantic, Faeroe Islands, Spitzbergen
2016 Mar 09 -- 01:58:19 GMT -- Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, Pacific
2017 Aug 21 -- 18:26:40 GMT -- N Pacific, contiguous US, S Atlantic


Richard Carrier's master's thesis: Cultural History of the Lunar and Solar Eclipse in the Early Roman Empire about culture clashes between educated people, who often knew of the shadow theory of eclipses, and ordinary people, who often preferred to believe in the monster and sorcerer theories of eclipses. Some educated people got annoyed at all the noise that common people would make to try to stop lunar eclipses, and charlatans would often make a pretense of being able to stop them.

The monster theory of eclipses is a widespread prescientific belief; the monster is a wolf or a bear or a jaguar or a frog or a dragon or ...

The first known advocate of the shadow theory, however, was Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, who lived about 510 - 428 BCE.


Finally, there is a connection of this event to a boy getting a haircut from his father. What might it be?

 

[Nexus]

It doesn't make much sense why ordinary ancient people couldn't tell it was the moons shadow. You can clearly see the moon is slightly larger than the sun and you know both move around different parts of the sky throughout the year so eventually they are going to cross paths. I realize people are really stupid but why didn't they also freak out every time the sun was blocked by clouds?

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

I use a welding helmet.

You can stare at the sun all day long through one of those.

I have a piece of welding glass that I use to make long photo exposures, and I was all ready. So were the clouds.

 

[lpetrich]

It may be self-evident to us, but it would not be self-evident to someone who thought that the Earth is a flat object a few tens to a few hundreds of mi/km across and that the Sun, Moon, and stars are a similar distance from the Earth. What I just described was a more-or-less universal premodern, prescientific cosmology.

It's not surprising that this cosmology often involved the belief that eclipses are due to monsters eating the Sun and the Moon.

As to clouds vs. eclipses, eclipses are not nearly as frequent as clouds, but if they were, they wouldn't seem like big disasters. A total solar eclipse must seem especially frightening -- the Sun being eaten away and then disappearing in the middle of the day.


Elsewhere in the Solar System, eclipses are much more common occurrences. They are relatively rare in the Earth-Moon system because the Earth-Moon distance and orbit inclination cause each others' shadows to miss each other most of the time.