Eclipse Pictures
Today we drove down to Toledo and Greenup to view the eclipse where totality would last a couple of minutes. We had a nice drive down.
By the time we got close, the light was already taking on that odd tone of an eclipse. It's so eerie. Witch-light, were-light, half-light ... but nothing at all like ordinary twilight. It has a thin, grey character that makes everything look stranger. You can feel the magic shift, if you're sensitive to that sort of thing, around a quarter to half blockage of the sun. By the time it's down to that last quarter, it's starting to get dark and the effect is really strong. There's a sense of the tide going out, sort of, the power of light waning; when you go into and through and out of an eclipse, it's like feeling fall turn to spring on fast-forward.
The thing about eclipses is that they're very rare in the universe. You need two bodies of exactly the right size, in exactly the right relationships, to make it happen at all. Even with that, it wavers and doesn't always hit quite right, so you're more likely to see a partial or annular eclipse than a full one. But it's beautiful and magical and like nothing else in existence. There is something awe-inspiring about knowing how unlikely it is, and watching it happen anyway.
Finding a good spot proved more challenging. One of my favorite things about eclipse watching is the pinhole effect. When I was little, dark viewing glasses weren't widely available to the public. (People have been making such things from obsidian or smoked glass for thousands of years, but not cheaply, and the same was true even for plastic ones until more recently.) So we made pinhole cameras, where you poke a hole in a dark box and the dot of light will -- in an eclipse -- turn into a crescent. You can do the same trick by pinching your thumbs and forefingers tightly together. Catch is, you need fairly smooth pavement or a car hood to see it. Grass or gravel break up the light too much. But we were able to use eclipse glasses to gauge the progress; they give a very good image of the changing shape of the sun as the moon moves across it.
Eventually we found an empty parking lot at a church that had a sidewalk running under a tree. We needed a tree south of the sidewalk to throw shadows. Because the really cool thing is that all the pinholes between the leaves that normally make those little circles of dappled light will be crescents (or in an annular eclipse, rings, which is also awesome).
I brought out a lava rock to charge it with eclipse energy. I kept it in my pocket and took it out a bunch of times to bounce around in my hands so all sides were exposed during the different phases of the eclipse. I only dropped it once. It's almost cubical and, well, kind of thinks it's a space rock, an effect doubtless enhanced by rolling it in fey sunlight.
I took a bunch of pictures. Below are some of the better ones.
This is a long view of the sidewalk. Conveniently it shows the grass on the left and gravel on the right, so you can see the effects of the crescents on all three surfaces.
This is a closeup of the sidewalk with maple seeds. You can see the many small crescents with their points aiming down and slightly rightward. This is one of the places where I got good images.
A branch overhead casts a forked shadow. This is another of the places where I consistently got good images.
This is a later picture of the sidewalk with maple seeds, when the crescents are thinner.
This is a later picture of the sidewalk with forked shadow, when the crescents are thinner.
I tried taking a picture of the sun's reflection in a puddle, when there was just a sliver of light, but it still shows as round. I'm okay with that. I don't have a fancy camera or epic skill with it. I just like to play around. Unlike most scientists, I also don't feel compelled to guess what will happen before it does. I enjoy doing things and observing the results, even if they don't always turn out as well as I might have wished.
Around this time, a very confused barred owl started calling hysterically. When it gets dark enough during an eclipse, wildlife that shifts behavior based on external signals like light levels will go into its evening routine, while the ones with an actual bioclock are all, "WTF dude? It's the middle of the day!" Anyhow, I recognized that the call was an owl from previous research, but couldn't remember the name, so I looked it up when I got home.
This is a long view of the sidewalk when the crescents are hair-thin.
This is a closeup of the hair-thin crescents.
Here is the sidewalk with forked shadow when the crescents are hair-thin.
The church yard has violets blooming. In an eclipse, the colors change in a way that's hard to describe, and not all that easy to grasp even when you're standing in it. I took this picture to break up sets of the pavement images -- the earlier sets don't have dividers like this -- but when I looked at it afterwards, I realized that it captures just a little of that odd lighting. The violets look very different here than they normally would, with a definite grayish tone.
We got a fantastic view of totality. There was one really obvious crater right at the bottom that caught like a spark, and as the totality was waning, another one showed on the right side. During totality, there was a glorious corona. Venus and Jupiter came out, although sadly we couldn't spot the comet in the same area. Just seeing the sun's corona is a magical experience, all that hidden power made visible. And there's nothing like the flash of the diamond ring, the moment that totality breaks into the waning eclipse.
I fucking love science.
I tried taking a picture of the corona during totality, but it just shows as a light spot.
I also tried taking a picture of the puddle to capture the corona, but again, it just looks like a bright spot.
This is the church yard just after totality. Notice how much brighter green it is? It's brighter just a couple minutes after totality than it was a good 5-10 minutes before totality. An interesting quirk of eclipses is that you can see the growing darkness much earlier, and it looks darker. During totality is not full dark but fairly close, like late twilight. The streetlights came on. But just after totality, the effect wanes much faster. I don't have fancy instruments measure that, but you can see it in how the grass looks. It's not quite normal, there's still an odd cast to the colors, but it's much less pronounced.
This is a long view of the sidewalk after totality.
In this closeup of the sidewalk after totality, you can see that the direction of the crescents has reversed. The points now aim upward. The sidewalk is covered with tiny smiles.
Here is the sidewalk with maple seeds after totality.
Here is the sidewalk with the forked shadow after totality. I love how fluffy and feathery this looks.
This is a closer view of the forked shadow after totality.
Since we were in Greenup just after totality, we stopped for lunch at Naf Naf. We made a couple of awesome discoveries. 1) They will actually make you a hummus buster if you ask for a stuffed pita with the right fillings. We got chicken shawarma with hummus and chopped salad. 2) They have a new dressing, a pomegranate vinaigrette made with pomegranate molasses. We did not pour it on the pita because it's very liquid and wouldn't have stayed put, but we tasted it and it's wonderful. I plan to make something with it tomorrow. And go back to Naf Naf another time for supper when we can pour the vinaigrette over a plate of shawarma and rice.
By the time we got home, the eclipse was almost over. We used our eclipse glasses to check it again. There was just the tiniest nibble out of one edge of the sun. So we got to see the very end of it too.
It has been a wonderful and awe-inspiring day.
By the time we got close, the light was already taking on that odd tone of an eclipse. It's so eerie. Witch-light, were-light, half-light ... but nothing at all like ordinary twilight. It has a thin, grey character that makes everything look stranger. You can feel the magic shift, if you're sensitive to that sort of thing, around a quarter to half blockage of the sun. By the time it's down to that last quarter, it's starting to get dark and the effect is really strong. There's a sense of the tide going out, sort of, the power of light waning; when you go into and through and out of an eclipse, it's like feeling fall turn to spring on fast-forward.
The thing about eclipses is that they're very rare in the universe. You need two bodies of exactly the right size, in exactly the right relationships, to make it happen at all. Even with that, it wavers and doesn't always hit quite right, so you're more likely to see a partial or annular eclipse than a full one. But it's beautiful and magical and like nothing else in existence. There is something awe-inspiring about knowing how unlikely it is, and watching it happen anyway.
Finding a good spot proved more challenging. One of my favorite things about eclipse watching is the pinhole effect. When I was little, dark viewing glasses weren't widely available to the public. (People have been making such things from obsidian or smoked glass for thousands of years, but not cheaply, and the same was true even for plastic ones until more recently.) So we made pinhole cameras, where you poke a hole in a dark box and the dot of light will -- in an eclipse -- turn into a crescent. You can do the same trick by pinching your thumbs and forefingers tightly together. Catch is, you need fairly smooth pavement or a car hood to see it. Grass or gravel break up the light too much. But we were able to use eclipse glasses to gauge the progress; they give a very good image of the changing shape of the sun as the moon moves across it.
Eventually we found an empty parking lot at a church that had a sidewalk running under a tree. We needed a tree south of the sidewalk to throw shadows. Because the really cool thing is that all the pinholes between the leaves that normally make those little circles of dappled light will be crescents (or in an annular eclipse, rings, which is also awesome).
I brought out a lava rock to charge it with eclipse energy. I kept it in my pocket and took it out a bunch of times to bounce around in my hands so all sides were exposed during the different phases of the eclipse. I only dropped it once. It's almost cubical and, well, kind of thinks it's a space rock, an effect doubtless enhanced by rolling it in fey sunlight.
I took a bunch of pictures. Below are some of the better ones.
This is a long view of the sidewalk. Conveniently it shows the grass on the left and gravel on the right, so you can see the effects of the crescents on all three surfaces.
This is a closeup of the sidewalk with maple seeds. You can see the many small crescents with their points aiming down and slightly rightward. This is one of the places where I got good images.
A branch overhead casts a forked shadow. This is another of the places where I consistently got good images.
This is a later picture of the sidewalk with maple seeds, when the crescents are thinner.
This is a later picture of the sidewalk with forked shadow, when the crescents are thinner.
I tried taking a picture of the sun's reflection in a puddle, when there was just a sliver of light, but it still shows as round. I'm okay with that. I don't have a fancy camera or epic skill with it. I just like to play around. Unlike most scientists, I also don't feel compelled to guess what will happen before it does. I enjoy doing things and observing the results, even if they don't always turn out as well as I might have wished.
Around this time, a very confused barred owl started calling hysterically. When it gets dark enough during an eclipse, wildlife that shifts behavior based on external signals like light levels will go into its evening routine, while the ones with an actual bioclock are all, "WTF dude? It's the middle of the day!" Anyhow, I recognized that the call was an owl from previous research, but couldn't remember the name, so I looked it up when I got home.
This is a long view of the sidewalk when the crescents are hair-thin.
This is a closeup of the hair-thin crescents.
Here is the sidewalk with forked shadow when the crescents are hair-thin.
The church yard has violets blooming. In an eclipse, the colors change in a way that's hard to describe, and not all that easy to grasp even when you're standing in it. I took this picture to break up sets of the pavement images -- the earlier sets don't have dividers like this -- but when I looked at it afterwards, I realized that it captures just a little of that odd lighting. The violets look very different here than they normally would, with a definite grayish tone.
We got a fantastic view of totality. There was one really obvious crater right at the bottom that caught like a spark, and as the totality was waning, another one showed on the right side. During totality, there was a glorious corona. Venus and Jupiter came out, although sadly we couldn't spot the comet in the same area. Just seeing the sun's corona is a magical experience, all that hidden power made visible. And there's nothing like the flash of the diamond ring, the moment that totality breaks into the waning eclipse.
I fucking love science.
I tried taking a picture of the corona during totality, but it just shows as a light spot.
I also tried taking a picture of the puddle to capture the corona, but again, it just looks like a bright spot.
This is the church yard just after totality. Notice how much brighter green it is? It's brighter just a couple minutes after totality than it was a good 5-10 minutes before totality. An interesting quirk of eclipses is that you can see the growing darkness much earlier, and it looks darker. During totality is not full dark but fairly close, like late twilight. The streetlights came on. But just after totality, the effect wanes much faster. I don't have fancy instruments measure that, but you can see it in how the grass looks. It's not quite normal, there's still an odd cast to the colors, but it's much less pronounced.
This is a long view of the sidewalk after totality.
In this closeup of the sidewalk after totality, you can see that the direction of the crescents has reversed. The points now aim upward. The sidewalk is covered with tiny smiles.
Here is the sidewalk with maple seeds after totality.
Here is the sidewalk with the forked shadow after totality. I love how fluffy and feathery this looks.
This is a closer view of the forked shadow after totality.
Since we were in Greenup just after totality, we stopped for lunch at Naf Naf. We made a couple of awesome discoveries. 1) They will actually make you a hummus buster if you ask for a stuffed pita with the right fillings. We got chicken shawarma with hummus and chopped salad. 2) They have a new dressing, a pomegranate vinaigrette made with pomegranate molasses. We did not pour it on the pita because it's very liquid and wouldn't have stayed put, but we tasted it and it's wonderful. I plan to make something with it tomorrow. And go back to Naf Naf another time for supper when we can pour the vinaigrette over a plate of shawarma and rice.
By the time we got home, the eclipse was almost over. We used our eclipse glasses to check it again. There was just the tiniest nibble out of one edge of the sun. So we got to see the very end of it too.
It has been a wonderful and awe-inspiring day.