Thursday, August 24, 2017

Eclipse...

Eclipse...  APOD has a beautiful photo of Monday's eclipse at totality, at right (click to embiggen, or get the full resolution image).  This shows quite nicely what we saw through our binoculars at totality.  It doesn't show how (relatively) bright those orange prominences were – they stood out very clearly.  I could make out the two you see on the right side here; Debbie was able to make out the one on the left as well.

Below are a couple of animations made from images taken by the GOES16 satellite during the eclipse (and more where these came from).  In them you can very clearly see the moon's shadow as it scoots across the U.S. from west to east.


Watching these and pondering upon them leads to a couple obvious questions.  Why is the moon's shadow so darned fuzzy?  And why is the darkest part only (about) 80 miles wide, when the moon itself is over 2,100 miles wide?  Some information that will help you understand: here, here, and here...