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Travel the path of the solar eclipse

washingtonpost.com

11–20 of 74 posts

Re: Travel the path of the solar eclipse

#16
post #5

the orientation is horrible. why is north right-ish? just no.

There is a minimap in the upper right corner to help you orient yourself.

the minimap is oriented differently (north is up) whereas the main map view is not; that just contributes to the spatially confusing presentation in my opninion. maybe a rectangle of the full map fov along the minimap path rather than a circle would help mitigate this, I don't know... it's also following the path of the eclipse backwards, which is also distracting.

Re: Travel the path of the solar eclipse

#17

I really like the attention to detail where the shape of the "shadow of the sun" changes based on the distance from the equator.

Though it can be thought of as varying with latitude in this case, it's much more complicated than that for eclipses in general. So latitude can work as a pragmatic proxy variable in this case but not for all eclipses: e.g. http://www.hk-mcc.net/david/eclipse/image/se20080207.GIF

Moon's orbit is not on the equator (closer to the ecliptic), the Sun isn't fixed in the sky, etc.

Re: Travel the path of the solar eclipse

#18
post #17

I really like the attention to detail where the shape of the "shadow of the sun" changes based on the distance from the equator.

Though it can be thought of as varying with latitude in this case, it's much more complicated than that for eclipses in general. So latitude can work as a pragmatic proxy variable in this case but not for all eclipses: e.g. http://www.hk-mcc.net/david/eclipse/image/se20080207.GIF Moon's orbit is not on the equator (closer to the ecliptic), the Sun isn't fixed in the sky, etc.

That's cool, I didn't even think about that!

So in your opinion does the linked article (it feels wrong to call it that...) accurately depict this (or at least depict it accurately enough that it's not deceiving)? Or like you kind of hinted at, is it close enough during this particular eclipse to not really matter?

Re: Travel the path of the solar eclipse

#19
It is also peppered with nice little sound bites of cool info:

McCool Junction, Neb., won’t get McCold, but the air temperature during totality drops by an average of about 12 degrees Fahrenheit, according to astrophysicist Fred Espenak.

Re: Travel the path of the solar eclipse

#20
post #6

Not a journalism piece, but this is a great map for getting details along the path; http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2017...

We actually used the data on this site for a related graphic here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/eclipse/?ut...
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