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The most accurate map for August 21’s total solar eclipse

nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov

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Re: The most accurate map for August 21’s total solar eclipse

#151

Post by throwanem »

baursak wrote: post #51
idlewords wrote: post #24

If you've never seen a total eclipse before and you live in the US, make every effort to see this one! It's not something that you can get the feel of by viewing photos or video. Watching the sun get eaten by a black void activates something deep inside the animal brain. Don't settle for a partial eclipse, do what it takes to get in the path of totality. If you have seen a total eclipse before, then you don't need an…

> Watching the sun get eaten by a black void activates something deep inside the animal brain. I was planning to have my 5 year old son see it. But now I wonder whether it will have any traumatic effect on him.

Sounds like the kind of thing my father would've said. He was a great one for inflicting trauma as a result of ill-thought-through attempts to prevent it. I really can't recommend him as a role model in that regard or many others.

In any case, I saw my first near-total solar eclipse at about your son's age. I don't recall as it did me any harm - indeed, I thought it was brilliant. The only real cause for trepidation would be looking at it with bare eyes, but there exist any number of expedients there.

Re: The most accurate map for August 21’s total solar eclipse

#152

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

dotancohen wrote: post #142
cydonian_monk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was five when I saw my first; only thing traumatic about it was the smell inside the welder's helmet we were passing around to watch it.

Welders helmets are _not_ effective enough to make viewing the sun safe. Don't do that.

Welder here. A welding helmet with a Shade 14 lens should be okay. A lower shade, say Shade 11 or higher, plus dark safety glasses should be okay for short periods of viewing the sun while it is at least partially eclipsed.

1. https://www.space.com/15614-sun-observing-safety-tips-infogr...

Re: The most accurate map for August 21’s total solar eclipse

#153

Post by alkonaut »

I don't want to travel to this one if I can avoid it, and there seems to be none in Europe in my life time.

Will the April 2024 one be as good as this one? I suppose one drawback of that one is that april is probably(?) much larger risk of clouds in a lot of the US, than august?

https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/list-total-solar.html

Re: The most accurate map for August 21’s total solar eclipse

#154

Post by gravypod »

Stratoscope wrote: post #100

Here are my viewing tips, based on my experience in the 1979 eclipse in Oregon. You can photograph the eclipse, but you will have a much grander experience if you don't try. Photography is just a distraction from the awesome spectacle of the eclipse, including the phenomena that happen on the ground. There will be plenty of other people taking great photos, so enjoy those after the eclipse. A total eclipse, viewed di…

> Except during totality, when the Sun's bright face is completely blocked by the Moon, it is never safe to look directly at the Sun through a telescope or binoculars. During the partial phases of the eclipse, you must secure a special-purpose solar filter over the front of your optics before aiming at the Sun.

That's a quote from one of the links. Most people will not be in totality. Most people will only be seeing a partial eclipse. The shaded in line from this [1] image is where totality will happen.

Most people watching the eclipse will need some form of eye wear.

[1] - https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a012400/a012458/us...

Re: The most accurate map for August 21’s total solar eclipse

#156

Post by leblancfg »

rootbear wrote: post #130
leblancfg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks dehhn. From the LRO picture in the article, you can see that they're actually taking high-precision elevation maps of both the Moon and Earth into consideration, which sounds like something rather computationally intensive. I might be wrong, but I don't think they used Blender to handle that. I would be curious to hear what tool they actually use, their pipeline, etc.

To the best of my knowledge, it was animated in Maya and rendered with Pixar's Renderman. When I was in that group, we used IDL to do any elaborate calculations needed, and then imported the data into Maya/Renderman. This is exactly what Hollywood does when they have to render a scene that requires a lot of simulation. I can ask Ernie if he used anything special for this production.

That's amazing, thanks so much. Ernie, if you're reading this, great job :)

Re: The most accurate map for August 21’s total solar eclipse

#157

Post by dionidium »

joezydeco wrote: post #52
dugmartin wrote: post #23

If you want to experience the greatest duration plan a trip to Southern Illinois (more info about duration here: https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/illinois/ ). As a bonus a friend of mine's family winery has booked Ozzy to "bark at the moon" during the eclipse: http://loudwire.com/ozzy-osbourne-headlining-moonstock-solar...

Most of the Carbondale area was booked solid months ago. There may be some campsites open but not much else. I'm staying in St Louis the night before and then picking a direction to drive based on weather. I don't think it's worth all the hassle to get to southern Illinois just to get 3 more seconds of totality. This map will show you how much totality you can experience, unlike the NASA charts. http://xjubier.free.f…

I'll be in St. Louis for this, too. I'm thinking about viewing it from here:

https://mostateparks.com/event/64121/solar-eclipse-showdown

Re: The most accurate map for August 21’s total solar eclipse

#158

Post by JPKab »

ant6n wrote: post #101
jasode wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>, or western Nebraska. I'll be in eastern Nebraska (Omaha) and will drive south on I-80 towards the eclipse path and hopefully pull off to the side and park somewhere. What's hard to plan for is whether too many other Nebraskans will have the exact same idea which means I have to camp out a ridiculous 12 hours before the event to secure a spot -- or give up entirely.

I'm planning to drive up north from Denver, the day of. Kind of concerned about how many people will have the same idea, and how early I should start...

I'm in Denver area too. The question is this:

How much better is a 100% eclipse vs. a 90% eclipse that we'll get here?

Is it worth the trip to Wyoming? I think so, but not positive.

Re: The most accurate map for August 21’s total solar eclipse

#159

Post by JPKab »

jasode wrote: post #19
learc83 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just get a hotel outside of the path of totality, get up super early and drive to it?

That's what I'm doing but the wildcard is we don't know what a meaningful amount of "super early" would mean since we don't have recent eclipses in the USA to use as past guides about crowd behavior. It's an unprecedented mega event since the last total eclipse to cross the USA-48 was 1918 when the horse & buggy was still prevalent. I plan to find a spot 6 hours early but my worst fear is that everybody else camped o…

Wait a minute:

I thought the last full eclipse to cross the USA was in the late 70's??? Pretty sure it hasn't been since 1918.

Yep, I was right:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_February_26,_...

Re: The most accurate map for August 21’s total solar eclipse

#160

Post by joezydeco »

dionidium wrote: post #157
joezydeco wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the Carbondale area was booked solid months ago. There may be some campsites open but not much else. I'm staying in St Louis the night before and then picking a direction to drive based on weather. I don't think it's worth all the hassle to get to southern Illinois just to get 3 more seconds of totality. This map will show you how much totality you can experience, unlike the NASA charts. http://xjubier.free.f…

I'll be in St. Louis for this, too. I'm thinking about viewing it from here: https://mostateparks.com/event/64121/solar-eclipse-showdown

I've been trying to scout out some open areas away from civilization, mostly to avoid ambient light but also to avoid huge traffic in and out of any park or freeway interchange.

I fully anticipate traffic to be screwed up for hours afterward.

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