Duck
Sarcastic remark goes here
Sarah and I went down to her family's land in southern Illinois for the eclipse.
The first half of the trip I was holding the minivan's steering wheel in the 10 o'clock position and getting 15 mpg at 70 mph because of the wind from the east, but strangely, 22 mpg if I slowed down to 65. Just 5 mph made a huge difference.
Wind resistance squares when your speed doubles, but still..
Anyhoo, the 2nd half of the 300 mile drive was in a monsoon. There was more water in the sky than air.
Then yesterday it was clear blue sky all day. We got lucky. It's raining here again right now.
I've seen partial eclipses twice. The sun looks like Pac-man through a welding helmet but that's it.
This time I was in the path of totality and it was awesome.
When the sun looked like a fingernail clipping, the radiant heat was gone and the women were complaining that it was cold, but there was still enough light outside that our eyes were able to adjust & it still looked like normal daylight.
As it got darker, it looked like dusk except at dusk there are long shadows because the sun is over the horizon. During the eclipse twilight, the dim light was still coming from directly above. It seemed artificial, like it was coming from a helicopter search light. But the helicopter has a bad alternator and it's battery was dying.
Then in the course of like 5 minutes it went to almost total darkness. During the totality, we didn't need the glasses and welding helmets to look at the sun. We could see solar flares with our bare eyes. It was badass.
None of my attempts at getting a picture were successful because of the auto-focus on my cheap phone, but if you're looking at professional grade pictures taken from southern Illinois, and you see a red spot on the edge of the moon, that red spot was facing south. Perceived as the bottom from that location. And everybody was facing south because that's where the sun was at.
I'm not familiar with the local wildlife but Sarah's dad is kind of a naturalist who can identify any species of bird or tree. He said the birds that were making noise during the totality only make those noises just before dawn.
There was a sunset effect on the horizon in all directions because we were seeing light from outside of the moon's shadow. But where we were standing, it was pure night. Very weird.
During an eclipse of the sun, the shadows on the ground beneath a tree will be a bunch of crescent shapes via the same effect as a shadow box but I don't quite understand how a tree is functioning as a shadow box.. But I got some pictures of that.
I have very weak, intermittent cell service here, so im gonna have to wait til I get headed home before I can post them.
My dad got a better picture from some small town near Indianapolis where he went, because he's got a better phone.
The first half of the trip I was holding the minivan's steering wheel in the 10 o'clock position and getting 15 mpg at 70 mph because of the wind from the east, but strangely, 22 mpg if I slowed down to 65. Just 5 mph made a huge difference.
Wind resistance squares when your speed doubles, but still..
Anyhoo, the 2nd half of the 300 mile drive was in a monsoon. There was more water in the sky than air.
Then yesterday it was clear blue sky all day. We got lucky. It's raining here again right now.
I've seen partial eclipses twice. The sun looks like Pac-man through a welding helmet but that's it.
This time I was in the path of totality and it was awesome.
When the sun looked like a fingernail clipping, the radiant heat was gone and the women were complaining that it was cold, but there was still enough light outside that our eyes were able to adjust & it still looked like normal daylight.
As it got darker, it looked like dusk except at dusk there are long shadows because the sun is over the horizon. During the eclipse twilight, the dim light was still coming from directly above. It seemed artificial, like it was coming from a helicopter search light. But the helicopter has a bad alternator and it's battery was dying.
Then in the course of like 5 minutes it went to almost total darkness. During the totality, we didn't need the glasses and welding helmets to look at the sun. We could see solar flares with our bare eyes. It was badass.
None of my attempts at getting a picture were successful because of the auto-focus on my cheap phone, but if you're looking at professional grade pictures taken from southern Illinois, and you see a red spot on the edge of the moon, that red spot was facing south. Perceived as the bottom from that location. And everybody was facing south because that's where the sun was at.
I'm not familiar with the local wildlife but Sarah's dad is kind of a naturalist who can identify any species of bird or tree. He said the birds that were making noise during the totality only make those noises just before dawn.
There was a sunset effect on the horizon in all directions because we were seeing light from outside of the moon's shadow. But where we were standing, it was pure night. Very weird.
During an eclipse of the sun, the shadows on the ground beneath a tree will be a bunch of crescent shapes via the same effect as a shadow box but I don't quite understand how a tree is functioning as a shadow box.. But I got some pictures of that.
I have very weak, intermittent cell service here, so im gonna have to wait til I get headed home before I can post them.
My dad got a better picture from some small town near Indianapolis where he went, because he's got a better phone.
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