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| Oops, glasses marked safe and approved may not be. And even if they are, don't stare too long. |
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| New and improved map of totality shows shadow moving in wrong direction for our cosmology |
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Desi Lydic on Trump's Nebraska electoral vote play and the 2024 solar eclipse
- WARNING: According to Hindu and Indian lore, it is very bad to see a solar eclipse. Go indoors and stay there until all is clear. It's bad luck and mojo. The shadow is harmful. Approach at own risk.
Our whole lives, for every eclipse, we have been told, "It will be 500 years before this happens again" to make it seem like a precious and irreplaceable sight to see. That's the profit-motive news for ya.
It may technically be true, but the fact is there is a full eclipse every 18 months and partial ones every five months, according to C2C 4/3/24 guest astronomer Dr. Tyler Nordgren. That makes a lot more sense.
There's always one to see that will be better, like the upcoming Egyptian full solar eclipse that will last for like 7.5 minutes, which million will travel to see. It won't be possible to sit on a pyramid to see it, but the skies are likely to be clear. The other thing we are not told is that, whatever it is that causes an eclipse (likely Rahu and not Luna/Chandra/Soma, our moon) casts a shadow as wide as itself and not narrower. It is a law of light and optics. So if it is the moon, our satellite is very small and nearby. Some declare that sun and moon are of the same size, revolving above us in a changing oval pattern, not Earth (Tierra, Bhumi) revolving in their faces as they hold still.
The other interesting thing to know, and it's good reason to get to totality if possible, is that 95% or even 99% totality is nothing like the full thing. All that happens at less than totality is some dimming and interesting shadows under trees where dappled light shows many little eclipses. In 100%, the world goes dark, temperatures drop, and the birds and insects get confused, one going silent and landing, the other chirping, only to stop a few minutes later to carry on as before. What an awe-inspiring sight it must have been before we thought we knew everything, trying to come up with an explanation for what was happening. Now we assume we are told the real story, when we've been fed misinformation that does not align with our observations. Yet, no one seems to notice.
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| 2024 Total Solar Eclipse Path 04.08.24 (Etsy) |
That would not happen with the arrangement we are told we begin with. Maybe it's starting in Maine and coming down toward Texas and beyond. That would make more sense. Years ago, there was a solar eclipse visible on the West Coast, beginning in the Pacific Northwest and crossing down toward Florida and beyond. No one noticed that this is impossible?
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| Eclipse shadow moving in wrong direction |
The shadow could never move from the northwest down to the southeast IF the Earth were spinning east to make the sun seem like it is traveling west. Map it out on a markerboard, and one thing becomes clear: We're being lied to. At that time, we were at Caltech surrounded by scientists, science students, and eclipse fans. We posed the question of how what we were seeing through filtered telescopes and using pinhole boxes could not possibly be caused by the moon.
Before the eclipse, the moon was in eastern sky and disappeared by daybreak. This was mentioned to the Caltech professor standing there in front of a crowd. He agreed. Then, looking through the telescope, the professor was told to see it. He did. "Look again," he was prompted. Whatever is passing in front of the sun to obscure it is coming down from the upper left down to the lower right. "Okay," he said, since we could all see and confirm that. "So we're to believe the moon traveled backwards to get in position to block the sun by descending down and crossing at an angle?"
The moon mostly goes from the east, not overhead, but in a trajectory that takes it south, moving west, and curving up toward Santa Monica and the Pacific Northwest. It changes through the year, but it is inconsistent with holding still as we on Earth race at 1,000 MPH toward the east. The professor, a vaunted scientist, was stymied. He kept starting and stopping like man in search of a lie to cling to: "The moon actually rises twice, because there are two moonrises every day," he repeated, not coming to a point. Does it?
We don't think so, but say that it does, how would that explain anything. Could he have meant to say it appeared the night before as usual then raced back to block the sun in the late morning to form the eclipse. He was asked for the path of travel, which was obvious every night preceding the eclipse. Point at Maine or the northeast and swing the hand across the sky toward Florida, continuing over the Gulf and back up toward the Santa Monica Bay. That's how it looks from Los Angeles. That was no different the night before.
Often the moon doesn't make it all the way before sinking down below the western horizon. With that established, how in the world was the moon now coming down from high above the sun at an angle? The Caltech professor had no answer, and he knew it, but everyone was staring at him, hoping for a clever explanation that would render all of this clear.
Instead, he said, "I'll have to ask the boys in the lab" as if they were working on the problem underground somewhere on campus, toiling away with their calculus and adjusting their world-class telescopes, sending frantic messages on their computers to Hubble to turn around and catch this earthly event. Did the professor quit, realizing he had been lied to and had been lying to all of his students and now his current audience? Nope. That paycheck kept him right where he was, head down, going along to get along.
- Wisdom Quarterly will get to the bottom of this mysterious controversy tomorrow at the West Coast's greatest institute of scientific learning, Caltech, at the university's big solar eclipse viewing party. All are welcome to attend because Griffith Park Observatory will be closed and the Mt. Wilson event has been scuttled. Hey, if they're available, why not stump a scientist with facts?
How to watch the solar eclipse from California — and avoid heartbreak if chasing ‘totality’
RONG-GONG LIN II, LORENA IÑIGUEZ ELEBEE, SEAN GREENE, LOS ANGELEST TIMES, PUBLISHED APRIL 1, 2024, UPDATED APRIL 3, 2024, 11:11 AM PT
While a narrow strip of North America celebrates the arrival of a rare total solar eclipse April 8 — when midday darkness will be cast on a sliver of states, including Texas, Illinois, Ohio, and New York — there won’t be any “totality” in Los Angeles.
Still, if the skies remain cloud-free, California will enjoy an impressive partial eclipse that will feature the moon taking a bite out of the late-morning sun.
In Los Angeles, about half of the sun will be visibly covered by the moon, and in San Francisco, one-third will be.
The northernmost parts of the state will see the smallest amount of the eclipse, while cities to the south will experience more.
In Crescent City, in coastal Del Norte County, about 25% of the sun will be eclipsed; in Holtville, near the Mexican border in Imperial County, up to 58% of the sun will be blocked.
It’ll be the last partial solar eclipse for L.A. and San Francisco until 2029.
The event has generated considerable buzz, as it will be the last total solar eclipse seen from the contiguous United States until 2044.
The last one was in 2017, and before that, in 1979. Last October’s “ring of fire” solar eclipse was not total but “annular,” in which the moon was a bit farther away from Earth and short of completely blotting out the sun, thus leaving a glowing ring around it.
2024 solar eclipse
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| Map shows the path of totality arcing through parts of Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and New England. Obscuration varies from 100%, 90%, 75%, and a minimum of 50% farther north. |
On April 8, parts of the United States will experience a total solar eclipse. The rest of the continental U.S. will be able to see a partial eclipse.
Cities in a narrow, 115-mile [wide?] “path of totality” — where the moon completely blocks the sun’s visible surface — include Mazatlán, Mexico; Dallas; Indianapolis; Cleveland; Niagara Falls, N.Y.; and Sherbrooke, Canada.
An estimated 31.5 million live in the path of totality, and about 200 million others are within a few hours’ drive.
Far more people live in or near the eclipse’s path compared with those in 2017 and 1979.
What makes this solar eclipse particularly notable is that the entire contiguous U.S., as well as parts of Alaska and Hawaii, will be able to view at least a partial eclipse, allowing for a national experience.
But there’s a risk of heartbreak for eclipse aficionados if clouds roll in. Overcast skies will still darken in the path of totality, but “it’s obviously not as much fun as observing a solar eclipse in a cloud-free sky,” said Jean-Luc Margot, a UCLA professor of planetary astronomy.
Los Angeles view
In Los Angeles, the partial solar eclipse will start at 10:06 am, and a substantial bite of the sun will be obvious by 10:39 am, peaking at 11:12 am.
By 12:22 pm, it will be over, according to the Griffith Observatory.
Viewers will be able to see a small, little bite-sized chunk that the moon is taking out of the sun as it blocks some of its light.
— Dakotah Tyler, UCLA astrophysics doctoral student
NASA offers an eclipse explorer map, at go.nasa.gov/EclipseExplorer, with data for U.S. cities.
“You will be able to see a small, little, bite-sized chunk that the moon is taking out of the sun as it blocks some of its light,” said Dakotah Tyler, an astrophysics doctoral student at UCLA, who also makes science videos on social media.
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| Breatharians live on real light and prana. |
“So that’s still a really cool thing to see, even if you’re not in the path of totality.”
No one should look at the sun directly during any phase of a partial solar eclipse.
And relying only on regular sunglasses, smoked glass, or polarizing filters is also unsafe.
“It is very dangerous to look at the partially eclipsed sun directly with your own eyes,” said Ed Krupp, the longtime director of the Griffith Observatory.
- [Indian yogis who practice gazing at the sun, do so under special conditions that allow the atmosphere to act as a filter, when it is very low in the sky. Practice that only under expert supervision of an experienced yogi who is neither blind nor hard-of-seeing. Or else, expect a burned retina. While sunlight is good, this may not be the sun. A replacement may have taken its place, as in The Truman Show. A hologram figure hiding the real thing, as with the moon, is quite possible, as hard as it may be to believe or accept that we have been deceived for a long time.]
“You’re tempted to do it, but it will burn the retinas permanently and cause permanent [partial or possibly complete] blindness.”
A man uses eclipse glasses while looking up at the sky
Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker uses eclipse glasses to look at the partial solar eclipse during team practice on Oct. 14, 2023 (Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press).
In one documented case, a young woman who looked at the 2017 solar eclipse for 20 seconds without eye protection suffered permanent eye damage with no known treatment, according to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai.
Within hours, her eyesight became blurry and she could only see the color black. Doctors found she had crescent-shaped retinal damage, which was the “shape of the visible portion of the sun during the partial solar eclipse in New York City,” the facility said.
- [It is also important to have a diet rich in antioxidants and low in oxidized fried, processed, highly processed, and ultra-processed food-like stuffs, which put the "junk" in term "junk food," which is actually an oxymoron.]
“You need eye protection. That’s crucial,” Margot said.
People should obtain eclipse glasses or handheld sun filters, but buy them from reputable retailers.
NASA says safe solar viewers should comply with the ISO 12312-2 international standard, adopted in 2015. Those made with this standard can be used indefinitely as long as they aren’t damaged, the American Astronomical Society says, so those left over from the 2017 eclipse are safe to use if they aren’t torn, scratched, or punctured, or the filters aren’t coming loose from the cardboard of plastic frames.
BEWARE: Some eclipse glasses are labeled ISO-compliant but haven’t been properly tested, the society said.
“Don’t pick up your eclipse glasses on some street corner. People make fake ones now, and it’s quite problematic,” Krupp said.
The American Astronomical Society posts a list of North American manufacturers and importers whose products are safe if used properly.
A man watches a solar eclipse.
Mike Guymon of Santa Monica brought a Solarama — a solar eclipse viewing filter — to watch the annular solar eclipse in Bluff, Utah, in 2023 (Ash Ponders/Los Angeles Times).
Some experts also warn against staring at the eclipse for minutes on end, even with proper eye protection.
Krupp suggests looking up for just a moment, to see the progress, and then waiting 10 minutes or so before seeing how it looks again.
“Just because you have a filter, or eclipse glasses, doesn’t mean that it’s safe...to keep staring and staring. That’s the last thing you want to do,” Krupp said.
Pinhole camera and other ways
Another way to monitor the eclipse’s progression is through a pinhole camera, which can be made by poking a pin-size hole in a piece of aluminum foil or paper with a safety pin, paper clip, or pencil, and projecting the image of the sun onto the ground.
Holding up a colander can also project the partial eclipse onto the ground, as can looking at sunlight dappling through a tree’s leaves, or through your fingers aligned perpendicularly.
People using binoculars, camera lenses, and telescopes need to mount proper solar filters on the outermost lenses receiving light, filtering the powerful rays before they enter the device. Otherwise, the sunlight will be concentrated, and instant, severe eye injury can occur, NASA warns.
How to ruin your smart phone
For those interested in taking photos of the eclipse with their smartphone, Krupp suggested shooting wide-angle views.
The sun will appear pretty small, “but you’ve got the landscape around there” — similar to how people take photographs of sunrises and sunsets.
There will be eclipse viewing parties across California, including at the California Science Center in South L.A., Caltech in Pasadena, and Cal State L.A.
No parties at Griffith Observatory or Mt. Wilson
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| It's a great excuse to party outside. |
A number of public libraries across Los Angeles County also will hold viewing parties, and eclipse glasses will be available as long as supplies last.
One notable place that won’t host an in-person watch party is Griffith Observatory. Instead, it will broadcast the total solar eclipse live from Belton, Texas.
The Griffith Observatory Foundation is leading a viewing trip there as well as to Mazatlán, Mexico, where Krupp will be.
Weather worries
A big worry for eclipse chasers seeking to be in the path of totality is the weather. Unlike the Aug. 21, 2017, total solar eclipse, which was blessed with sunny skies for many, this April could be a different story.
“I’m calling this eclipse — April 8, 2024 — the ‘heartbreaker’ because we know the saying: ‘April showers bring May flowers.’ So dodging the clouds is going to be anything but a trivial task for this particular eclipse,” Jeremy Veldman, president of the Memphis Astronomical Society.
He said this in a YouTube video that covered 45 years of weather satellite photos for previous April 8 dates, as compiled by the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies.
A detailed analysis of past climate conditions for April, between 2000 and 2020, posted on the website Eclipsophile, said the probability of cloudiness increases the farther north one goes.
But climate averages are useful only if one is planning years in advance.
There have been times on April 8, Veldman said, such as in 2019, where “no matter where you go, there’s the likelihood you’re gonna be dodging clouds,” with the exception of southern Texas.
But sometimes, like on April 8, 1994, southern Texas was cloudy but other areas farther north were largely clear, even New York.
The Eclipsophile analysis said that now is the time to start looking at long- and short-range forecasts.
Where to see it?
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| 100 million Native before Columbus |
But deciding to move locations too late could leave you stuck in traffic. “Even interstates will come to a halt when the eclipse is imminent,” the Eclipsophile analysis said.
For those lucky enough to experience totality and who are positioned along the eclipse’s center line, it’ll be a relatively long event, generally 3½ to 4 minutes, depending on location.
By contrast, the longest duration of the 2017 total solar eclipse, near Carbondale, Illinois, was about 2 minutes, 40 seconds.
Veteran eclipse watchers say those in the path of totality can expect a transcendental experience. The last moment of sunlight that’s blocked out by the moon “produces a bright, bright spot on the dark disk of the sun,” Krupp said, referred to as a “diamond ring.”
If skies are clear, you might notice a “distinct column of the shadow of the moon — this cylindrical shadow column — moving toward you,” said Science Director for Mt. Wilson Observatory Tim Thompson.
Stange sky phenomena
“It’s like somebody threw a switch. The sun is completely blocked by the moon [or more likely by Rahu]. The darkness of the eclipsed sun is darker than the sky around it,” Krupp said.
“It seems like the deepest black that you’ve ever seen, particularly in contrast with the rest of the sky — which has grown dark, but not nighttime dark.”
Animals may react strangely, thinking it’s nighttime, and it can feel like “you’ve got this wraparound sunrise-sunset,” Krupp said.
“You’re looking out in every direction from where you are in the middle of the shadow.”
Added Thompson: “It’s that sunrise-sunset effect all along the horizon. You can’t see that kind of thing, ever, except during a total eclipse.”
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| We're afraid to look and go blind. |
People may be able to see the sun’s corona, the outer solar atmosphere, that’s superheated to millions of degrees — hotter than the surface of the sun, Tyler said.
“The corona is a very bright white and very obvious. And you never see anything like that unless it’s a total eclipse,” Thompson said.
“The contrast between that and the moon is so extreme — the moon becomes the blackest thing you’ve ever seen. ... It’s just like a hole punched in the universe.”
A total solar eclipse: The total solar eclipse of 2017, in a photo taken from the Gulfstream III, a business jet operated by NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center. The sun’s corona, the outer solar atmosphere, which is viewable as streams of white light, can be seen only during a total eclipse (Carla Thomas/NASA).
Krupp described the corona as a “pearly whitish halo of light around the sun but has streamers going in various directions.”
Another feature that can be seen are flame-like structures called prominences on the edge of the sun, showing up in contrast to the white light of the corona. They are coming out of the chromosphere, “which is shining with the red light of hydrogen at a particular temperature. And that looks sort of like a little arc of red, just depending on where you get it. It hugs the dark disk of the sun,” Krupp said.
Thompson suggested those attending their first total solar eclipse not bother with special viewing equipment during totality. “If you’ve never done it before, then you don’t want to be distracted by anything,” Thompson said.
“Don’t take telescopes, don’t try to photograph it. Maybe hold up your cellphone camera and take a click or something. ...But it’s all about being there and being part of the experience.”
A person views an eclipse with solar glasses.
Tatiana Kalish, 17, of El Segundo views a partial solar eclipse at the California Science Center in 2017 (Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times).
It’s a marvel that solar eclipses happen in such perfect formation between Earth, the moon [or Rahu], and the sun.
There’s “this amazing cosmic coincidence that the size of the moon and the size of the sun — in an angular sense — are about the same,” Margot said.
“Even though the sun is 400 times larger than the moon...it also happens to be 400 times further away.”
- [This is likely untrue. They are the same size and roughly the same distance away. That is far more probable, but we have been led to believe this other nonsense that runs counter to every religion's explanation of the sky. The Bible says otherwise. And Buddhist cosmology, based largely on Vedic, Hindu, and Jain cosmologies. In these explanations, the Earth is a disk under the firmament with the moon chasing the sun around the sky in a circle, which is exactly as it appears to us and our observations. Science tells another story that is so unlikely and hard to believe that we must never question it or fear ridicule, expulsion from school or graduate programs, and self doubt.]
Those in the path of totality should keep an eye on the time — perhaps using a timer or alarm — to know when to put their eclipse glasses back on. Original source:
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