No Confederate flags
When the eclipse reached totality Monday afternoon, we looked around and thought this one was much darker than the total eclipse that passed an hour away in 2017. Seven years ago when the celestial light dimmed it was dusky, but not dark. This time we were on the edge of night. What’s up with that?
It turns out that the explanation was out there. The geometry of the Earth, Moon and Sun were slightly different this time, making the path of totality wider (Mashable):
Setting aside weather conditions, the wider path of totality is also the reason some solar eclipse observers could be treated to a darker sky, Zeiler said, allowing people to see more stars against the backdrop.
If a person stood in the center of the narrower path in 2017, then went to the center of the broader 2024 path this April, the sky could appear darker the second time around. The duration of the eclipse and the level of darkness are related.
“If you’re in the center, then you’re a farther distance away from sunlight. That’s what it boils down to — how far you are from the edge of the shadow,” he said.
So it was near Bloomington, Indiana. The backroads drive up from Louisville, Kentucky through southwest Indiana was otherwise free of Confederate flags and Trump signs except for one house festooned with TRUMP you-name-it. But it was clear we’d arrived in one of Indiana’s few blue patches when a Bloomington church sign read:
Save The Earth
It’s The Only Planet
With Chocolate
The college town (Indiana University Bloomington) was flooded with people. You could tell by the offers of eclipse parking around town: $20, $30, $40. The frat houses brought couches out onto the lawns. A concert set up on a campus lawn for the afternoon. Security vehicles and personnel blocked entrances to empty lots around campus.
Out by the reservoir bridge (I spent 2017’s eclipse by a closer one) where the parking was free and less crowded, a family brought their 10-year-old from states away to celebrate her birthday. After the eclipse ended, the parking lot crowd sang Happy Birthday.
Most (including me) were too busy watching the sky to notice the shadow bands on the pavement the spouse and another woman witnessed:
As millions of Americans look to the sky on Monday to witness the total solar eclipse, a group of young astronomers from the University of Pittsburgh will be in a sparse pocket of the Texas Hill Country trying to crack a 200-year-old mystery.
Shadow bands are thin, wavy lines of alternating light and dark that seem to race across the ground in the minute or so right before, and right after, the moon completely blocks out the sun.
No one knows why this phenomenon occurs. But since German astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt wrote about it in 1820, a couple of theories have emerged.
The leading hypothesis is that shadow bands are caused by atmospheric turbulence. In the brief moments before and after the moon completely obscures the sun, just a sliver of light is visible. As that sliver travels down through the Earth’s atmosphere, it hits air pockets of different densities. That causes refraction patterns to create the undulating shadows.
As Digby noted in a tweet from her bunker, no virgins were sacrificed in the making of this eclipse. No Rapture either.
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