Eclipse

We drove south to be in the path of totality of the eclipse last Monday. It was pretty amazing. As we approached totality, the temperature dropped suddenly, and it started getting dark. But it wasn't the same kind of dark you see at twilight. At twilight, the sun's rays are hitting your position horizontally, which means they're travelling through a lot more atmosphere. Here, the sun's rays were almost vertical. So when those rays get blocked the darkness doesn't have the same feel to it.

And seeing the sun's corona was absolutely amazing. My sister-in-law pointed out that at about the eleven o'clock position, the corona was red instead of yellow. Patterico claims he saw a solar flare with his naked eye, which would be pretty amazing. It reminded me of this post where I pointed out that, for millennia, solar eclipses were the only way humankind could observe the sun's corona and so learn about the universe. In fact, there is no other place in our solar system where you can stand on one body and have another body block out the sun, but just barely enough to allow the corona to be visible. There are plenty of other examples like this where it seems like the earth and the universe are not merely set up to allow for advanced life but to allow for science. Another example from the linked post is that a planet has to be in a spiral galaxy and be between spiral arms. In just about any other place in any other type of galaxy, you wouldn't be able to see beyond the nearby stellar neighborhood, much less out of the galaxy.

At one point I realized that a partially eclipsed sun looks like the Cheshire Cat's smile. It was like an emoji in the sky. A smiling mouth. And if that mouth had suddenly puckered up, I would have said, "Eek! Lips!"

OK, I'll stop.