This Friday, March 20, there will be a total eclipse of the Sun
Total (from land) only if you live on the Faroe Islands or Svalbard. Or have a boat or a plane (and use them to travel into the path of totality). Even then, despite Moon being almost as close at it gets, it’ll still be (relatively) short. Under 3 minutes.
It will be rather nice to look at from the UK and most of Europe. I’m in St. Petersburg where it’ll only be around 75% obscured, but I like these events. I’ve seen two totalities: Hawaii 1991, Romania 1999. Awesome stuff.
The celestial event is, of course, a partial eclipse before it’s total. It’s all too tempting to look at the Sun before totality. Do not. It’s like looking at an electric welding torch, but much. much brighter (indeed - I’ll be heading to the hardware store for some #14 welding glass if the weather looks good here). Newspapers and other media usually go nuts with tips and warnings.
Hope to see a partial eclipse here.
Friends of mine are on a cruise up to Iceland and the Faroes specially to see it. Being on a ship, they should manage to be at a good viewing point… Can’t claim not to be jealous!
Wait for 2017. On August 21, 2017, we’ll get a solar eclipse whose path of totality will include a curve running across the U.S. from Oregon to South Carolina.
About 75% in St. Petersburg. After 8 days without a cloud in the sky, today was overcast. And now it’s only slightly cloudy with occasional views. At times I used four pairs of UV sunglasses. It mainly got windy, colder, the birds were singing as it got dark.
Londoner here. Was supposed to be 84%. Thankfully we had our usual full cloud cover, bumping it up to an unbeatable 100%! I am so smug right now.
If any of you are wondering what you missed, the background to the ‘reply’ box is a pretty good likeness.
ETA: actually, looking out the window now (12:25 GMT) the sun’s starting to come out. Bah. The silly astronomers said that would happen around 9:35ish. Shows what they know.
I actually got a great view [from Somerset in the South-West of the UK]. Really quite pleased as it was very misty to start with, but by the time the action started the clouds were parting enough to see it clearly. Got some nice photos but only with my phone so not very professional I’m afraid:
ETA: Actually the clouds helped a bit because they filtered the light quite a lot. So it was possible to look directly at the Sun without protection at times.
Ingot a surprisingly good view through the frosted doors at work; they cut out enough light to really show off the crescent shape, while leaving it totally safe to view.
I have to drive about 10 hours north into Oregon to get to totality. I’m planning to make the drive and see it.
It will be the first total solar eclipse since 1979 that’s visible from the lower 48 (CONUS), and it will be the first since 1918 where the total phase of the eclipse will be visible from the CONUS east coast to the west coast. The last time that happened was 08 June 1918.
Perfect weather in Berlin; warm, clear skies… breakfast and champagne at the lake with great people. I guess it was around 85% eclipsed at the peak. Not enough to make things dark exactly, just a strange dip in daylight almost as if on a cloudy day, though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It did get significantly colder though. Very cool!
Landed in work yesterday just in time for many of my colleagues gawping up at the sun. There was pretty heavy cloud cover but you could still make out the disc of the sun being obscured.
