My dad had unexpected heart surgery, so maybe my eclipse plans were going to be to fly to DFW to help out and where the weather forecast is for rain on Monday. But it went really well -- like allowed to go home a day earlier well -- so now it kinda looks like my eclipse plans are to stay in Berlin where there will be a total eclipse in 2135 (I would be in my late 160s).
Anyway, good for you for going up to where there's totality! I've seen two, and a couple more that were nearly total where I was, and there really is a qualitative difference between total and not.
Glad your dad is doing okay!
Also everyone is terribly worried about the cloudiness.
We have no eclipse plans except maybe taking the kid out of school early so we can see it with her, instead of the event the school has planned. The apex of the eclipse is right at dismissal time. How inconvenient. I feel a bit bad about not doing something eclipse-related, but we live a lot farther from totality than you do, as I've mentioned.
But what I am wondering is: which is the more dominant cause? Is it variations in the moon's distance to earth, or variations in the sun's distance to the earth?
I tried looking it up without mentioning eclipses. This says that the moon's distance from the Earth varies between 357,000 km and 407,000 km, or 14 percent. This says that the Earth's distance from the sun varies between 147.1 million and 152.1 million km, or 3.4 percent. The first one is bigger, so I'd assume that's the more dominant cause.
1: Glad your dad's doing better.
I'm still not sure if I'm going to drive out to see it l the totality.
Oh that's a good way to answer it. And yes - especially given that small variations in the closer object will have a bigger effect, it's gotta be allllllll moon, baby.
When they say total eclipse, is that always the no-corona kind? What's the word for being in the central path of a corona-kind of eclipse, like in the fall?
I'm googling a lot of pages saying you see coronas during total solar eclipses. (There's annular eclipses, but it doesn't fall dark during those.) Maybe no-corona total eclipses mean the moon is closer and covers the sun with room to spare, so it also covers coronas? Or maybe they're just days the sun is quieter.
I think "annular" is the vocabulary word I was missing, for what I was calling the corona-kind. Thanks!
6: A total eclipse is the only time when you get to see the corona from earth. (I mean, some observatories probably can, but I'm thinking as a mere mortal.) It's really big!
The moon blocks the solar disc, and that's what allows the earthbound to see the corona. In a partial, the usual light of the sun still far outshines the corona. So the light takes on a weird metallic quality, and you can see how the moon's blockage affects shadows, but you still don't get to see the corona.
Outside of totality, you also don't get the strange and unsettling effect where the sky above you gets dark and there's light around the horizon. Being in the zone of a total eclipse is a viscerally weird experience that media really do not capture.
(And thanks to all for the good wishes about my dad!)
7, 8, 10: In an annular, there's still a little bit of a ring of sun visible, and that's bright enough to keep the corona invisible.
NASA explains, and uses pictures:
https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/types/
I feel like that part might not be as impressive if I'm in the middle of Austin. :(
I think in an annular eclipse you're not just seeing the corona, but even some of the photosphere.
9: Hurra Torpedo is the world's leading kitchen appliance rock group.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br-D7UneS0E
(ok, I really should do this minor work task)
If by corona you mean not what I think of as the sun's disc but that radiating glow around it that you see, like in the first photo of the triptych in 12.link, that might only be seen in total eclipses. And then it's unclear other variation within that category that determines how bright the corona is.
I was mis-using the word "corona" for sure, to mean the outer annulus of actual sun. I also didn't know the word "photosphere" which would've been handy.
Speaking of natural phenomenon, is NY known for having earthquakes?! Is everyone okay?
First, assume a spherical Φωτως.
IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU CONVECT.
In the New York natural philosophy system, there is only one phenomenon.
18: Oh, I see now.
19: First two minutes, "whoa what was that?" "an earthquake?" "oh, an earthquake!"
Since then, continual skeeting that Eric Adams has lost the Mandate of Heaven.
Now I want to see an eclipse from a moving train traveling along the path of totality.
I have a cautionary tale for you.
I heard one cool thing is if you can watch from an elevated position you can see the shadow of totality rushing towards you across the surface of the earth at hundreds of miles per hour.
That's also easier to document with a phone camera than trying to figure out exposures and filters to photograph the sun, which everyone will be doing anyway.
I will be watching from Buffalo so metaphorically one of the least elevated places on earth. Forecast is for likely cloudy.
24, 26 now I want to see the totality from an elevated train
Wow! What a great trip you've put together, you and your kids will have a fantastic time! Sadly, we cannot easily reach the totality area because we will be in Japan for spring break with our kids (poor eclipse planning lol) so I'll have to live vicariously through you. :)
Genius plan. Here's hoping on the weather. We will be at Dinosaur Valley SP just outside of Glen Rose TX.
Speaking of natural phenomenon, is NY known for having earthquakes?! Is everyone okay?
It happens from time to time. There was another one about 10 years ago that led to similar reactions.
Anyway, yes, this is a brilliant eclipse plan.
For me it's a 4.5 hour drive to see totality, about the same as the 2017 one, which was unexpectedly* worth it so we're planning on doing it again.
* in the sense that if you'd asked me beforehand "would you drive 10 hours round trip just to see the sun replaced by a black disk surrounded with white troll doll hair, for only a few minutes" I would probably have said "no"
All ok here in New Jersey. I did feel it but nothing bad happened. The epicenter was extremely close to Bedminster, so working hypothesis is that the cause is that it's either a Trump insurance scam, or Ivana turning over in her grave.
36: Mined this for a Bluesky post with a map screenshot. Less than 5 miles!
I love all the warm congrats I'm getting for daring to remember that trains exist outside of enlightened topless trainbubs.
We're near totality here but will be going to visit friends where there will be more of it(/possible cloud cover) and I'm looking forward to that. Spring Break for the school district usually includes Easter, but was rescheduled to start Monday I assume to avoid liability for children who insist on staring at the sun.
My granddaughter is excited to see the August 2044 total eclipse in Glacier National Park. She'll be 27. I don't think I'll make it, but who knows.
So, Travis Co has declared a state of emergency, apparently, bold truth-tellers are saying, to help Biden impose a new wrld order on Texas.
That's what i got from Rolling Stone, anyway.
Looking at the list of upcoming eclipses, I feel like I should have made an effort in 1999 and 2017, both years where I could have traveled to totality without too much trouble, just some vacation planning.
I'm obsessed with clever travel plans, and this one is very clever, brava!
Our forecast keeps getting slightly better, but still isn't great.
I recently decided I want to visit Austin so that I can visit the bridge from Miracle in Season 2 of The Leftovers. It's very weird I haven't been there yet, but also the people in my field there seem to be leaving so it's getting tougher to get an invite.
Here's the thingy: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/solar-eclipse-conspiracy-theories-far-right-1234998475/
I assume it would be a pain to find the answer online, because the internet would be full of elementary explanations of how eclipses work.
Stop living in the dark ages; this is a perfect ChatGPT use case.
The variations in the appearance of the sun during an eclipse, particularly whether you see a corona around the moon or if the moon completely blots out the sun, are primarily due to variations in the moon's distance from the Earth rather than significant changes in the sun's distance from the Earth.
The moon's orbit around the Earth is elliptical, leading to changes in its distance from the Earth. When the moon is closer to the Earth (at its perigee), it appears larger in the sky. If an eclipse occurs at this time, the moon can completely cover the sun, leading to a total solar eclipse. Conversely, when the moon is farther from the Earth (at its apogee), it appears smaller in the sky. During an eclipse at this time, the moon might not completely cover the sun, resulting in an annular eclipse where a "ring of fire" or corona is visible around the moon.
The distance between the Earth and the sun does change throughout the year due to the Earth's elliptical orbit, with the Earth being closer to the sun (perihelion) in early January and farther away (aphelion) in early July. However, these variations are less significant in terms of their effect on the appearance of solar eclipses compared to the moon's varying distance from the Earth.
So, the dominant cause for the variation in how solar eclipses appear is the moon's distance from the Earth.
During an eclipse at this time, the moon might not completely cover the sun, resulting in an annular eclipse where a "ring of fire" or corona is visible around the moon.
This is pretty inconsistent with the explanations I found from planetariums and so forth - the ring visible in an annular eclipse is not the corona.
Upon interrogation, ChatGPT agrees with you.
SciAm also fucking it up. (Second paragraph) So are physics PhDs (first paragraph). Caltech is marginal. Going to absolve my LLM buddies on this one.
IDK, chatgpunfogged was pretty dang easy and efficient.
We (me, wife, kids, mom, and in-laws) are driving to the outskirts of Indianapolis for the eclipse. I think there's a decent chance I'm trapped in the car with everyone for 8 or 9 hours on the way back. The totality better be a goddamned spiritual experience.
A lot of places are saying don't look at the eclipse even when total and I think that's just to protect idiots who aren't watching the clock carefully and might look before or after totality. If you have eclipse glasses it's easy to tell- you won't see anything through the glasses at totality because they something like 10^7 filtering and the (actual) corona is nowhere near bright enough, somewhere around equivalent to a full moon, to see at that reduction.
Weather says only partly cloudy here on Monday afternoon. Maybe it will seem a little different.
35 is very reassuring. That's my plan -- rent a car and drive 4-5 hours up the Hudson to Plattsburg -- and it's good to know someone who did that before thought it was worth doing again.
Picking up rental cars along the Hudson line is my favorite NYC lifehack.
I'm planning to drive to Canton just outside the totality line the day before, crash there, then go to Akron on the day, 5 hours back in normal traffic. Maybe I'll have an unhappy surprise, but for getting back there are plenty of surface roads in Ohio, I figure that an hour away from the totality line traffic won't be bad.
The last time I was near Akron, there was a guy hauling liquid pig shit in an open lawn-care style trailer lined with a tarp.
It formed a core memory. I lived in Ohio for seven years, but now can't recall what that was like.
53: Are you still in the Central time zone? Just asking because one time I was late for a wedding due to forgetting Indiana is Eastern.
I think I've just finished my last college visit for selecting a college.
62: Doesn't it depend on whether you're in a county that's decided to associate itself with Chicago?
Should probably just dissolve the state into its neighbors.
67: I'm thinking Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School, so Grand Lakes University. How's your diving MH? Better get to work on the Triple Lindy,
Teo, got that New Mexico place names book today. Found it in a pretty amazing bookstore, Op Cit. One of the most unruly piles of books plus unopened cartons of books bookstores I've ever been in--especially one located in a small shopping mall.
67: Either Jim Jordan's House district or Mastriano's state house district.
Yes, this thread is giving me significant FOMO! I hope it's the experience of a lifetime!!!
(PS -- I used to be NCProsecutor over here, just hopping back in to say howdy.)
OH!! I was trying to figure out who you were. Hiya!
We were in totality in Oregon in both '79 and '17. Logistics lesson that might be useful: pre-eclipse traffic was heavy, but post-eclipse traffic was nightmarish. People arrive at their chosen viewing site at all different times, but everyone leaves at the same time...
And unfortunately given this week's weather forecast, clear skies are critical. The '79 eclipse was clouded out. Having it get dark at mid-day is interesting, but nothing like seeing the strange empty disk of the eclipsed sun. So good luck everyone!
No significant traffic delays getting to the center of totality zone. 445 miles in 6:45 including bathroom/fuel stop. Unfortunately forecast looks not great.
My drive to upstate NY on Friday was smooth. We only knew about the earthquake because people kept messaging me to see if I was ok. Tonight is supposed to be a great night for star gazing, and I'm hoping tomorrow is just as clear for the eclipse.
Definitely looking cloudy here! If I had a less pleasant day planned, I'd definitely cancel. As is, I'm probably still tipping towards bumming around Austin for the day, but keeping my expectations low for the actual eclipse.
The weather here is perfect today. The organizers should reschedule it.
We are also driving to Plattsburgh. Vague plan is to hang out at the SUNY Plattsburgh campus. I lucked out because I was already at a conference near Albany this weekend so the rest of my family is driving up and meeting me here tonight. It's 7 hours from Plattsburgh back to our house, though, even without traffic. And I think 87 south is going to be brutal tomorrow afternoon.
Sunny Plattsburgh sounds like a good idea.
I am vaguely hoping the traffic back into the city won't be too absurd. But I don't have an argument as to why it shouldn't be. One thing is that it won't all be city people -- that is, people from Albany and the Hudson Valley will be getting home and clearing off the road rather than being in my way all the way home.
I don't know anything about Plattsburgh, but there's a decent looking park downtown next to a couple of places to eat lunch, so that's my plan.
I'm in Buffalo and heard most people going to this area went to Niagara so I'm hoping if we jump on the highway right when totality ends we'll beat the traffic.
There's a total in Spain in two years so maybe we'll try to catch that one.
I know everything about Plattsburgh, but I'm too polite to say it in public.
The organizers should reschedule it.
Let's do it, and be legends.
We're predicted to be ~50% cloud cover.
Assume there will be a new liveblog FPP?
Ah, I see this post has magically moved to the top.
We will be this place SW of Ft. Worth called Dinosaur Valley Sp (dinosaur tracks). Looking at Google Maps discovered there is a place called the Creation Evidence Museum just outside the park. The exhibits seem to be a mish-mosh, but one looks to be an ark with dinosaurs on it.
What with the clouds, Ace, Hawaii and Jammies all bailed. So it's me, Pokey, and Rascal.
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I saw the white raven today! Photos at various Other Places. I tried to log in to Flickr but I don't remember my password.
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Ravens without pigment are like goths without leather: kind of scrawny and unhealthy-looking.
Leucistic!? I hardly even know it.
I'm rooting for the 3 of you have such a great day that you win every family dispute by default for the next several years due to recognition of the superiority of your decision making process. That's how families work right?
As I was about to post I noticed that "great day" had autocorrected to "grey day"...
We are currently driving through intermittent grayness. But have reached the roadside bluebonnet and indian paintbrush portion of the journey (look to be jus barely starting to bloom here).
97: Clear sky eclipses are all pretty similar. If you have hazy-but-visible you could see some neat and unique effects.
We are on a train from Toronto to Niagara, on the Canadian side. We'll wave to SP. Also feeling quite smug about plans - a weekend in Toronto, an easy enough train ride, and a chance for AJ to see the Falls even if the clouds don't clear.
Ha! Looks like a speeding ticket 63 in a 55, on a highway that is generally 70-75 mph, with speed zone for an almost non-existent town (became 70 100 yards past where we were stopped). Ok just a warning with my wife signing an acknowledgement that she done bad and has been WARNED.
I like the spirit of 99!
The downtown library impressed the kids in a very cute country mouse way. It is admittedly a cool building!
101: oh no! what town?! not that I'll know it.
The "town" was Chalk Mountain in Erath County.
Cloudy, then clear, now some clouds.
It has started partially here!
It's nice being in a crowd because every 10 minutes we can see the sun for 10 seconds, and inevitably someone starts cheering so we know to put our glasses on.
There's good cloud cover here, but we can seen the sun. We're only going to get about half, but you can see the little nibble already.
So far we're super lucky, clear skies. Partials started and looking great.
Mostly cear skies in St Johnsburey Center, Vermont. Someone tried to sell us maple syrup.
Getting cloudier here. 20 minutes away from totality.
108: Maybe it's a euphemism like "bath salts".
Nice clear break here. Very good crescent shadows. Getting twilighty.
we had a few seconds during totality where you could see the sun. Not actually clear, but clear enough to feel like it wasn't a complete bust.
Greetings from beautiful downtown Plattsburgh. There ar light clouds/haze -- the partial sun shows through fine but I don't know about the corona.
Nice!
2:50 PM EST here and there are a few clouds in the sky but it's 90 percent sunny. Looks cool but I hope it looks better in half an hour.
108: My parents are in Newport, Vermont. I'm still not sure why. As best I can tell, it's an hour out of their way from another site that would also be in totality.
Kids got interviewed by the local library guy for future promos.
Mostly sunny in southern Illinois, about ten minutes to totality beginning.
We have a whispy cloud over the sun, worried it'll mess up the corona.
Birds starting to get weird.
Very clear throughout. Similar to 2017, som of the lower wispy clouds that had been present dissipated a bit as it cooled. Also Ft. Worth Astronomy Club folks happened to be here with good equipment.
Also got great looks and pics of scissor-tailed flycatchers.
Whispy cloud wasn't enough to block the corona! Was surprised at how bright the planets were.
I could see the effect through light clouds, if anyone is worried. I'd also recommend doing the pinhole thing if it's not too late.
It was actually a sunny day here! And it got really dark for a few minutes! Amazing! Who knew?
Totality in Akron for me. Worth the trip, round obscured sun is something else.
Loving the total eclipse live blogging
That was very cool. Dogs howled, I saw the diamond necklace, and the people of Plattsburgh hollered and applauded to welcome the sun back.
I think it might have been cooler with less cloud; while I could see the corona, it was a bright haze, not a detailed shape. Maybe next time.
What if we all met up in Mallorca in August 2026?
Turns out the sun is hot!
Goodnight Moon!
Without eclipse glasses, I wouldn't have noticed anything in southern California, which is how I've experienced partial eclipses before when I never bothered to look.
It was still cool, though. I put a lens of some eclipse glasses in front of my camera and managed to get a few pictures.
Absolutely stunning view of totality here, a little north of Plattsburgh.
Oh wow, that was SO GOOD! We were tragically thwarted from seeing the actual totality from our viewing location when we traveled for the last one (a thick and puffy white cloud rolled up a few seconds before and sat there, blocking everything) and it was such a relief that our wispy clouds here were no impediment. We were nearly at the very center of the path so we got to stare at it for multiple minutes. Top notch, first rate, amazing, very much would like to do it again.
More surprising than the eclipse*, the sun was out and it was clear today! My town had more than 90% totality so my kid and I hung out at our house. It was pretty cool especially the rainbow prism that rainbow-ed little crescents. My husband drove to (the infamous**) Meat Cove for the totality and was super impressed.
*our eclipse song is You're So Vain for referencing the eclipse before the last one I saw here in junior high
**also drug smuggling
We were in totality in Oregon in both '79 and '17.
'79 was my one and only, from the courtyard outside 7th grade math class. It was a cloudy morning but we got an opening in the clouds for totality.
What if we all met up in Mallorca in August 2026?
I'm suggesting Asturias or possibly La Rioja to my family. Mallorca in August sounds brutally hot. (Probably La Rioja too, but more vineyards there.)
I've never been to Mallorca, so I'm going to assume it's like Akron.
Yes, both places are near large bodies of water.
Looks like you can view 2026 in Greenland and Iceland if you like cooler weather.
President Trump may have bought Greenland by then, so no passport required.
The wine industries of Iceland and Greenland are as yet underdeveloped.
They don't have grapes that grow there so they have to use fermented seal blubber.
My granddaughter says Iceland in 26. Maybe an unfogged Thing. þing I guess.
It was pretty cloudy but we got enough glimpses through the clouds to see crescent sun and corona.
Jumped in the car right after totality and made it back with almost no traffic.
We should all meet in Oviedo so we can piss on the statue of Woody Allen.
My son has spent the last seven hours on a school bus stuck in Vermont traffic.
Mine went to somewhere in Ohio and got back hours ago.
I want to see a map of actual cloudiness during the totality after all the predictions. Some like the NYT should show their ginal map vs. actual.
I did an eclipse-themed (short) blog post that might be of interest to some.
Some shots from webcams in the path of totality.
BBC here with the local angle. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68767024 I recommend in particular scrolling down to see the photo sent in by a BBC Weather Watcher in Dundonald.
152: Interesting indeed. One of the things that struck me reading Thucydides was his mention of natural events (eclipses, but also some earthquakes, a tsunami, an eruption of Etna) in a way modern historians don't do.
146: There's an essay--almost certainly outdated by now and probably inaccurate at the time--called "Vinland, Vínland" by the novelist Evan S. Connell talking about where Erik the Red's Straumfjord was, based on the argument about whether the "vin" is question is "wine" or "meadow". Give it a few decades of climate change and Immortan Erik could enjoy the Greenland terroir.
We went down to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to enjoy it with a crowd. The musical selection for totality was Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine", a somewhat surprising choice that I appreciated, and I got to see the diamond ring effect. Wildly cool.
152 is great! Of course eclipses are probably the oldest historical that we can date accurately, by their nature - there's a written account of one from 1223 BC- right before the Late Bronze Age Catastrophe, which is fascinating and everyone should read about it.
Would be interesting to know if there are any similar accounts in North America. ISTR there are oral history accounts of some massive tsunami on the west coast from quite far back? Will try to find details.
The Budj Bim eruption in Australia is probably the oldest recorded historical event - accounts survived as part of Aboriginal oral tradition. It happened thirty-seven thousand years ago.
In 5000 years they'll be debating the precise location of Saratoga and Nova Scotia and what exactly a Lear jet was.
I still don't regret driving to totality, but the four and a half hour drive home took ten hours what with traffic. Thank goodness for the restorative power of gas station naps -- ten minutes made a big difference.
The real treasure was the sleep you had along the way.
We met up with friends in Leipsic, Ohio, and the totality was worth the drive. On the way back we took country roads about half the way and hit almost no traffic and made it home by 8. I hadn't gamed it out, but going west, rather than south--or the second nearest place to us--probably saved us several hours overall. Pretty wonderful day that I expect the kids will always remember.
The main pattern in eclipses is that each eclipse is roughly repeated every 18 years 11 days and 8 hours, but because of the "8 hours" that means it's moved a third of the way around the world. So the easier pattern is that it repeats in roughly the same part of the world every 54 years 34 days. Though since it moves a bit each time it'll have moved quite a bit by that time.
I tried and failed to figure out how ancient astronomers first worked out the 18 year cycle, since a third of the world is a long way! Probably books of eclipse records being traded, but I don't know when or how exactly.
163.2: Persistent record-keeping, presumably. The Mayans figured it out independently.
More info here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saros_(astronomy)
And a cool animation:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Saros_136
164: Surely the Mayans only knew the 54-year version, not the 18-year version? How could they know what was happening a third of the way around the globe??
For the Greeks to work this out they would have needed to compare eclipse records in Morocco to those in China, which is difficult but possible. Should be completely impossible for the Mayans to do that (unless there's some other way to figure out that factor of 3).
Ah, I see a key point I was missing. Of course if you have a highly east-west oriented eclipse path (like the 2017 eclipse) then the end of one eclipse and the beginning of the next one aren't so far apart.
Presumably they kept track of how the moon's path changes from year to year and noticed shorter cycles?
I'm shocked that the train got you here within hours of when you meant it to. I guess it's mostly the other direction where it's likely to be hours late because it's had all of Chicago-Austin to get wildly off schedule whereas the other way it also has a very long way but has what they refer to as a lot of fat built into the schedule, i.e. the LA-San Antonio train gets in in the middle of the night and sits there until 7 am or something. Anyway I guess what I'm on about is wishing there were a local train but presumably that will never happen.
The eclipse was sort of nice but exactly the kind of thing that makes me feel like a jaded stick in the mud because I can't understand it as a hugely exciting thing.
Is this right? When the setting and rising of the moon is farthest from the solar plane you get an eclipse somewhere?
I could be wrong, but I'm extremely skeptical that there's any way to figure out that it's repeating every third of the way around the world instead of halfway around or never without having records from two relatively distant locations.
Or rather, when the angle between the paths of the sun and moon is at a maximum you get an eclipse somewhere.
The nodal precession is 18.6 years, so close to the right number. Just need to subtract a few epicycles.
158: are you thinking of oral history around the Cascadia subduction zone? The last one was in 1700 (the tsunami got to Japan in the other direction), old if not Bronze Age old.
For example, if you look at these two eclipses:
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/5MCSEmap/1901-2000/1973-06-30.gif
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/5MCSEmap/1901-2000/1991-07-11.gif
You *might* be able to guess the 18-year cycle if you had only astronomical records from northern South America. But it'd be really tricky as you do need E/W oriented eclipses, records from still a pretty large area, and you need to somehow recognize them as part of the same cycle even though you're seeing opposite ends of the route.
My sense of scale is way off, both distance and how fast things are spinning around. There are a lot more eclipses than I realized.
Do lunar eclipses help? I feel like ancient astronomers would have watched countless near conjunctions to have enough theory to reconcile cycles.
Yes Lunar eclipses also follow the same Saros cycle, but I don't think they make this "one third of the way around the world" problem particularly easier.
Like, lunar eclipses happen more predictably, since they're visible from everywhere, and they follow the same cycle.
Ah, but the lunar ones interleave the solar ones, so the lunar eclipse following the solar eclipse will only be *one-sixth* of the way around the world, which is way easier.
Though Lunar Eclipses are just wildly different, because the earth and the sun are not the same size from the moon (the earth is *much* bigger), which means that it's harder to see what route they're taking since huge swathes of the earth see them. Like a total lunar eclipse lasts for more than an hour rather than a few minutes and like a third of the earth gets totality.
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/LEplot2001/LE2029Jun26T.pdf
If the moon is rotated just right, during a total solar eclipse, you should be able to see the outline of the Apollo flag.
the same Saros cycle
AMG! MTG is right!
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I just got an email about this new book, Bluecoated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality. Potentially interesting to some of you. I'm not impressed by the blog post, which is confusingly written and tendentious, but the book still might contain interesting archival data. Purely FYI.
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I'm shocked that the train got you here within hours of when you meant it to. I guess it's mostly the other direction where it's likely to be hours late because it's had all of Chicago-Austin to get wildly off schedule whereas the other way it also has a very long way but has what they refer to as a lot of fat built into the schedule, i.e. the LA-San Antonio train gets in in the middle of the night and sits there until 7 am or something.
Basically yes. There's a daily northbound Texas Eagle that originates in San Antonio, and a thrice weekly northbound Texas Eagle that originates in LA, so as long as you're on the daily one, the northbound route is pretty stable early on.
I found this database by some guy that lets you calculate average delays at all the routes/stations/etc, and on average, Southbound is running 1.5 hours late by the time it gets to Austin. Last night it was an hour late, which was annoying but unsurprising.
158, 175: Yes, the 1700 earthquake/tsunami sounds like what ajay was remembering. Less spectacularly, there's also a neat example from Alaska of traditions preserving information about glacial advance and retreat that is confirmed by geological evidence.
Checking in with a bit of eclipse!
I'm in Phoenix for an Intel event and we got somewhere between 50 and 60% totality. The conference schedule had a coffee break placed at the right time for everyone to flock outside and point at the sky. The organizers produced viewers from somewhere, although there was also a stand handing out sunglasses as swag and some poor soul had to stand in front of it and head people off from putting them on to gaze at the sun.
It wasn't total enough for anything really weird but the light did feel....eclipse-y...in the way I remember from the 1999 totality and of course being here the sky was completely cloudless. I managed to get a photo in which you can see the partial eclipse in a lens flare but not in the sun itself, which is weird (I set up the camera app, donned the viewers, found the sun, and lifted the phone until it blanked it out of my field of view - I wasn't staring at it).
(My fellow Britons agreed that the sun being visible was considerably more remarkable than it being partially obscured. It's been like that for months, what's another few minutes?)
Then we all trooped back inside to listen to Bruce Mehlman complaining that the eclipse was a hard act to follow.
I was in London in 1999 and at the eclipse time it was cloudy enough that you couldn't tell anything was going on. There was a funny moment when people, including the group I was with, stopped on the sidewalkpavement* for a moment, looked at the sky, gave up, and went on their ways. I don't remember what percentage was supposed to be visible in London if it had been clear, definitely not close to totality.
*Probably I'm using this wrong, but why not try it.
Apparently in New York City the sun was over 90% occluded but it was still just a slight darkening of the overall light. My cousin was expecting more. Josh Marshall: "My takeaway is we've been running the sun way over capacity. Could turn it down to equivalent of 68 degrees like Carter advised and save a lot of energy."
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This is probably a stretch, but there was a former commenter who could potentially be be this person, except I can't read the whole thing because it's paywalled and the 12footladder website isn't helping.
(And what good does it do if it is the same person? And now I can't reveal the commenter, without outing the actual commenter's real name. So maybe this is foolish to post.)
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In other news Texas is big. But the long linear highway ROW wildflower gardens are delightful this time of year (but now out And historical markers numbered w/searchable database is quite nice. Am being a very busy passenger.
Some delay on I-35 into Austin from the north yesterday after the eclipse, but a lot probably due to rain and rush hour.
Further to 191, this would be a positive outcome: if anyone sends me the non-paywalled article, I would read it, and if it still seems like the former commenter and if it seems like a good idea, I would reach out to him at his email address.
162: Assume you meant going east rather than west (to a superflat place). And yes, from my Google Mapology studies after the eclipse, Indy towards Chicago was a 2nd tier backup. Worst (most persistent) seemed to be the NE interstates (I-87, 89 and 91) down from northern NY, Vermont and New Hampshire. Then Indy->Chicago, St. Louis from south, Ohio turnpike and I-79 towards Pittsburgh, south from Syracuse, Niagara->Toronto, Montreal from east, I-10 into San Antonio all looked pretty bad. None seemed as persistent as I-25 and I-5 in 2017, undoubtedly due to more non-interstate alternative routes than those 2.
Was it this? Because I found two more paragraphs.
Sent it to you. It rocks that my college newspaper hasn't changed their account or password in 25 years.
now I can't reveal the commenter, without outing the actual commenter's real name
Nah, that ship sailed on or about November 23, 2012. (Review of same book noted in the Medium article. You can guess which phrase I used to search the archives.)
Yep. That is definitely our former commenter.
I had no idea he had written so much. Hope he's O.K.
I'm reading the article now. Words fail me, other than an apology for my flippancy about the book review. I'm not even sure what to hope for, other than miracles.
Dumb question: if the MPEG at the top of this was shot from L1, why isn't the Moon in frame too?
201: yeah, ooof. That's awful. (Is this a weird topic for the WST or do they do random profiles like this?)
Also I'm remembering now that he joined us for dinner during the Veronica Mars trip meet-up.
Thanks. That was kind of bleak. But I guess bandaids can kind of fix smaller bullet holes.
This is awful. I had heard he was doing better, but that was years ago, before the pandemic. I'm really sad to learn this.
That thread had a really odd trajectory, didn't it? Despite the critical review it started off nice and then went through several, distinct nasty rows. They start when McManus turns up but not all of them actually involve him.
208: Yeah, I remembered the post and nature of the primary discussion, but not that so much else was from that same thread If you go to the end you see h-g kicking everyone out of the pool.
That thread is so long. I had no memory that I ever shut down threads, but there you have it. Also I was being kind of a prat in part of that thread, about one's inner life or lack thereof.
What a sad story. Our brains are complicated machines, and a certain percentage of them just go wrong. It may not be the first symptom, but loss of capacity to exercise judgment about whether to take medication or otherwise seek treatment is right up there. I wish we funded care at an appropriate level; if we did then maybe we, as a society, could turn the dial just a couple of clicks towards court-ordered treatment. I'm not suggesting we return to the 50s, but there's a lot of space between that and what we're doing now.
The book review thread is also quite something.
202: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=38192.0
Part of what's confusing about that thread is that a couple of the participants seem to have had their contributions wiped and comment references were largely-but-who-could-catch-them-all renumbered. It was painful to see the hints of pathology at the time and really awful to find out where it ended up.
I remember him from early Unfogged and even met him at a wedding in 2007. I found it troubling to see how he'd changed when he returned as a commenter but had no idea what he was struggling with.
"text himself seems at times to suffer from the very estrangement from things human that the narrative is meant to mimic; thus the disassociation is probably not entirely junior-associate-driven"
Alameida for the diagnostic win back in the book-review thread.
Something not dissimilar seems to have happened to a college friend. She was having quite the interesting career -- cooperative threat reduction (tamping down loose nuclear materials and suchlike) in post-Soviet countries -- and at some point she became convinced that Obama and Hillary Clinton had personally supervised her torture and being programmed to commit violent crimes at an unspecified future time. I think that family has been able to keep her housed, and at least occasionally treated. I was not close enough to her to have stayed involved, just a cautionary tale along the lines of jeez, ya never know. But also stay on your meds if you need them; if your brain doesn't make the right chemicals, store-bought is fine.
215.3 is strangely familiar, either you've discussed her here before or I've come across her sad story somewhere online.
217: I might have told the story here when she posted a manifesto. Some folks who knew her were worried that she would come to a college reunion with violent intent, but she did not. That's when I cut my last (tenuous anyway) online connections with her.
216: Yeah.
Ever since the Unabomber, it's been really hard to pull off a manifesto without sounding threatening and unbalanced.
Oh, no, poor guy. There is just no good solution to severe mental illness in someone with enough initiative to successfully resist being managed.
The tone of the articles and comments were such that I assumed he died (and I actively missed some wording to the contrary). At least that's not the case.
220: yeah, the diagnosis -- "a bipolar condition with schizoaffective disorder" -- seems diabolically tough to manage, harder than either component on its own. I knew a guy decades ago who suffered from a similar condition, and it sounds like he had a trajectory kind of similar to this before he died a couple of years ago, of pneumonia. (No one knew if it was Covid-related, oddly enough.) The manic swings are pretty forceful.
I would never have imagined seeing text's baby shoes in the WSJ.
Or finding out what shampoo he uses (used?).
It's being constantly promoted in a sponsored WST post for my other local alter ego's FB page, which is a little surreal. Like why is this article getting so much promotion?
Although the fact that I clicked on it yesterday probably explains why they keep showing it to me.
227: They look worn, and it doesn't look like his mom is interested in selling them.
I picture him being furious about this article, but I guess he's angry about a lot of things.
