There is a second page of this article (missed the link near the bottom to second page on my previous post) which goes quite in depth about acceptable and unacceptable solar filters.
My plan is to be somewhere along that highway, able to move quickly if clouds are getting in the way. Camp out in the desert somewhere the night before and get some good dark sky seeing as well.
I live near Albuquerque and plan on viewing the eclipse at one of the events around town (several are planned). The top of Sandia Mtn. would be an ideal place, and a mini-Dopefest would be fun, but I have some family members who want to see it also and they might have their own ideas on where to watch. Plus, May 20 is a friend’s birthday and he might want to have a birthday/eclipse viewing party.
Here is a list of events around town that mentions the Tram:
Here is a link to the Univ. of New Mexico Observatory’s event page. It will be on the UNM campus in town. I’ll most likely be here or at the top of Sandia.
Also, a partial lunar eclipse on June 4th will be visible for pretty much the same part of the globe as the eclipse will be a day or two later.
It’s the transit of Venus that takes place a day or two later, not the eclipse.
If anyone’s interested, I co-host a podcast about planetary science, and we did an episode this week about the upcoming transit. You can download it free here.
:smack: Yeah, I meant to say that.
The entire transit of Venus on 6 June will be visible from Sydney (weather permitting), starting at 0810 and finishing at 1450. I already have my entry ticket for the Observatory for the full duration of the transit. I’m glad I got in early, because the tickets are all sold out now.
The far north of Australia gets a brief taste of a total solar eclipse on 14 November this year. It will be the first of a series of six total solar eclipse paths to cross Australia in the next 26 years.
I’m aiming to go to both. With any luck there’ll be cruise ships or flights going from Aberdeen to the Faroes.
And I’ve long wanted to holiday in America.
That’s cool, hope I’ll be able to make at least one of those. The last total eclipse I saw was in Ceduna in 2002 (obligatory link to cool photo I took of it) and I see the path in 2030 passes very close to the same spot.
I see Sydney is smack on the centre line in 2028, too. Shame you guys have to schedule your winter for July - who thought that one up?
Perfect timing for a summer vacation in the Bend/Sunriver area in Oregon, and short drive to Madras which is near the centerline…been there twice and I love it…great microbreweries there too…that’s my plan for 2017.
Awesome. I’m outside the path of annularity but it seems that the sun will be 83% obscured at my location. Being that it’s later afternoon on the Westside of L.A. and given typical late spring weather patterns, I can probably expect 100% obscurity thanks to the dread “marine layer” of low clouds, but I would say it’s worth driving fifty or a hundred miles inland to see this.
Even if you don’t get to see totality or annularity, don’t miss this if the sun will be at least mostly obscured at your location. The dimming of the sun’s light combined with sharp-edged shadows makes for an effect that’s almost otherworldy.
Sadly, I note that the time of maximum eclipse, in L.A., comes only a little more than an hour before sunset. It’s hard not to be pessimistic; not only does that time of day and season of the year tend to be cloudy, but we also need to think about finding a place from which we can see the sun that late in the day. The beaches are the cloudiest places of all.
Edited to correct, as the above figure was estimated by clicking the map: From here, the magnitude (maximum percentage of the sun’s apparent diameter to be obscured) for L.A. viewers will be 85.9%, at which point about 78.6 of the sun’s disc will be obscured.
I do hope the weather spirits will be kind to us for once. They really did burst our balloons for the 1992 annular.
Let me pimp a new book on the topic (with, IMO, a **brilliant **cover!): Transit of Venus: 1631 to the Present by Australian astronomer Nick Lomb, published earlier this month.
Published, I think it’s fair to say, to rave reviews:
“… everyone should read Nick Lomb’s fascinating book, which beautifully and dramatically highlights both the history and scientific importance of the transit of Venus.”
—Professor Jay M. Pasachoff, Vice Chair, Historical Astronomy, Division of the American Astronomical Society
“This is exactly what a great astronomy book should be: comprehensive, highly informative, yet very accessible for lay readers, and beautifully illustrated to showcase the glory of the heavens.”
—Dr. Kevin Fewster, Director, National Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory, Greenwich, UK
“With this superb and lavishly illustrated book, astronomer Nick Lomb has provided the complete guide to Venus transits past and present. Essential reading for everyone.”
—Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer-in-Charge, Australian Astronomical Observatory
[disclosure: my partner works for the book’s original publisher, but has no financial interest in the book or the press per se]
Lomb’s book is an excellent one indeed Askance. I found it a great read.
Yes, the line of centrality in 2028 runs right through the middle of Sydney, only a couple of kilometres from the CBD, Opera House etc. If I’m still in my current house, I’ll get 3 minutes and 48 seconds of totality from my garden.
Most of us will have to travel a bit to see totality, and for many it would be a flight, not a drive. I see that the path pretty much bypasses the largest metro areas, although Chicago will enjoy a diametric obscuration of >90%.
Thing is, a 90% eclipse is only about 0.09% as interesting as a total eclipse. It’s amazing how much light that remianing 10% of the sun puts out - and of course you don’t see the corona, don’t get the "Oh my God someone has cut a black hole out of the sky :eek: " effect, and in short don’t feel like you’re standing on the surface of some kind of freaky alien planet. If there was, say, a 70% eclipse of the sun and nobody told you about it, you could quite easily not even notice.
Anyone who lives fairly close to the path of totality really ought to make every effort to travel inside it. 95%, or even 99%, really isn’t “close enough”.
I went to an annular eclipse in 86? And this annular eclipse was about as “tight” a one as one can get. As in some folks thought for a second or two if you were lucky/good you might be able to glimpse the corona. It was so close to a momentary total that at one point the parts of the sun you could barely see were not a solid ring but were broken up in a ring of beads along some parts due to “mountains” sticking up along the “edge” of the moon. It was so tight that people were worried about being positioned to within a few hundred feet of the right location of the center line.
So this one was as close to dark as you could get without being actually dark. Even THEN it wasn’t as dark as one would think. The few moments before and after 99 percent or more were covered its was “kinda oddly dark” for a sunny blue sky day. And for perhaps a bit more time before and after it was oddly dark in that if you knew what was going on you could notice it.
Like 2 minutes after it happened some local farmer with poor timing showed up :smack:
He just missed the cool shit.
Just putting even more emphasis on your point I guess.
Seconding this.
I saw a total eclipse in the south Pacific in 2010. It involved being on a catamaran that sailed out into the open ocean to catch totality. Before we left, the boat captain actually tried to talk the group into staying in Tahiti because after all we’d see 90% of it and wasn’t that good enough? He was met by a loud and resounding “NO!” from the entire group. I told him that 90% of a total eclipse was like having 90% of sex. That, he understood.