On 2017-08-17 11:39-0000 Schwartz, Steven J wrote:
Just to add a few cents' worth here, there are excellent resources at:
http://www.eclipse2017.org/
concerning where, when, what, how. While I would echo Alan's enthusiasm that being prepared and seeing a partial
eclipse is better than missing it altogether, I'd also echo the comment on the above website under "The path of
totality" which has a page "'Close' is not close enough!" I fought with my spouse to travel from the
south of France to be on the French coast of the English channel for the 1999 eclipse over the question of
"close". I won that fight and the instant we exited from totality she turned to me and asked "When's the
next one?". Totality enables you to see the solar corona which is too faint against a 90 or 95% eclipsed Sun. And
watch the animals respond.
And by way of small correction, solar eclipses themselves are not rare, they
occur every year or two. They're not always full eclipses and, as the planet is
75% covered by water, not often visible on land and certainly not cutting a
swathe across North America.
Under no circumstances look at the sun with the naked eye (or directly through
a camera lens or binoculars) apart from during totality (this is one of those
required health warnings). Alan's box will work well to watch the moon's
advancement over the solar disc. Viewing glasses are quite cheap, but be
careful as I'm told some being sold are fake.
Happy viewing
All excellent points.
Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).
Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________
Linux-powered Science
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