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posted by martyb on Tuesday August 22 2017, @01:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the come-join-in dept.

NASA site. Eclipse2017.org.

[Ed. addition] Please join in the comments with links to other sites that you have found. Also, what plans do you have, if any, for viewing the eclipse? Ignoring it? Getting together with friends? Traveling to get a better view? Would love to see comments with people's experiences of seeing the eclipse.

Also, I forgot where I'd seen it, but there was a suggestion to keep pets inside and away from windows, especially if you are where there is [nearly] total obscuration, as they may become confused and accidentally view the eclipse. I don't know about that. There seems to be quite a bit of wildlife that cannot go indoors during an eclipse and I'd never heard of large die-offs following an eclipse.

Maps for each of the United States showing the amount of obscuration at various points across the state and time of maximum obscuration.

Ars Technica story about what happens when you view an eclipse without protection.

The American Astronomical Society has a variety of resources at: https://eclipse.aas.org/

JAMA Ophthalmol journal article http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/fullarticle/2648904 (doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2017.2936) explains damage that can come from viewing the sun directly:

Damage to the fovea in solar retinopathy (sometimes called photic retinopathy or solar retinitis) occurs in 2 ways and by 2 distinct physical mechanisms. The spectrum of sunlight contains a significant fraction of near-infrared radiation (700-1500 nm), which can cause direct thermal injury (burns) via heat. Because we cannot see this light, and the retina lacks nociceptive receptors to signal pain, damage can occur without our knowledge. However, the more pressing concern when viewing a solar eclipse is for visible light, which in excess causes photochemical toxicity through rapid accumulation of reactive oxygen species and free radicals. This is especially damaging to the retinal pigment epithelium and choroid, which contain an abundance of photoactive materials rife for oxidation: heme proteins, melanosomes, lipofuscin, and the like.

Sky & Telescope article http://www.skyandtelescope.com/2017-total-solar-eclipse/solar-partial-eclipse-rest/ general information on eclipses and some viewing suggestions.

Pinhole Astrophotography http://users.erols.com/njastro/barry/pages/pinhole.htm has a somewhat technical explanation of how you can design a device for projecting an image of the eclipsing sun. An example is provided where the author projected an image 24.1 cm in diameter at a distance of 25.9 meters from the tripod-mounted 5.9mm mirror 'pinhole'. (That's a BIG pin.)


[TMB Note]: One of the perks of living in Tennessee now is I'll be less than an hour's drive from the path of totality. The Roomie and I will be hauling some viewing glasses, five cameras, two phones, a cooler of water, and a pair of huge sammiches up to it to look for a good viewing/photographing spot in an hour or so. Expect at least a few good quality shots either this evening or by the morning, depending on how much offline life decides to keep me otherwise busy.

Any of you who beat me to the punch and can spare the bandwidth, feel free to post links to your own shots here. If you include a copyright release for us to do so, we may use them either in an update to this story or in a latter dedicated images story.

Enjoy the show and make sure not to burn your retinas out.


[Update]: Excuse the quality. My camera was confirmed to be a cheap piece of crap whilst The Roomie's was confirmed to be smarter than him. At least the auto-focus setting is smarter than him. And, lastly, excuse the lack of embedded video. It's been a long day and I can't be arsed to figure out how to get rehash to quit stripping the video tag out at the moment. Have a link to the video and be happy with it.


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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @01:20PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @01:20PM (#557014)

    I'm with Randall, https://xkcd.com/1877/ [xkcd.com]
    Too much ignorant hype.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @02:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @02:58PM (#557054)

    Regarding the hover text: How is general relatively looking solid when 95% of the observable universe is now made of stuff only detectable as deviations from the theory?

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @05:45PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @05:45PM (#557133)

    Randal is an idiot.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allais_effect [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 21 2017, @11:06PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 21 2017, @11:06PM (#557269) Journal
      I'd hope you'll link to an observable effect next time. The experiments have the usual hallmarks of bad science - measuring phenomena which is within the margin of error for the instruments and having no explanation for why solar eclipses matter and normal new moon situations (which also has the Moon between the Sun and Earth, just not so directly that the Moon obscures the light of the Sun) do not.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @07:24PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @07:24PM (#557191)

    Eclipse Birds
    https://m.xkcd.com/1879/#comic. [xkcd.com]

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:40AM (1 child)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:40AM (#557428) Homepage
      Tastes are personal (objective in british english), out of the four I think this is the best one: https://m.xkcd.com/1878/
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @02:12AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @02:12AM (#557815)

        Yeah, I liked that one too.
        (Give me 2 days between Munroe's efforts and stuff slips my mind.)

        There's a solar eclipse about every 18 months, but, given the amount of ocean on Earth and numerous desolate areas, a bunch of those events go largely unobserved by significant numbers of folks.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]