Posts from Total Eclipse 2008

August 1st, 17:50 – what a day!

I filmed the most exciting part with a regular phone. Unfortunately, it didn't capture the important details of the scene, so I edited it in Photoshop. I drew a dark circle – the Moon, and two stars. Everything else – the Sun, the color scheme – is real. Now you can see exactly what the people in Siberia saw recently.

This breathtaking moment lasted for a couple of minutes. It was preceded by a slight twilight, but not the usual, even twilight as night approaches, but rather a contrasting one, in reddish-brown tones. While the Moon left only a small crescent of the Sun, it could only be seen with the naked eye through a filter. If you look without a filter, it's just a bright, ordinary Sun in the sky, with no visible disturbances. And only the complete, 100% coverage caused a short but stunning light show. Small stripes of shadows ran across the landscape; I don't know exactly what caused this effect. The Sun suddenly went out, as if the power had been switched off. Cars stopped. Nearby was a women's monastery, from which loud prayers could be heard. For two minutes, it was exactly as shown in the photo. Then – again, stripes of shadows, and the light came back on! The first effect of the Sun's appearance was exactly like a light bulb being switched on. After a couple of seconds, you couldn't look at the Sun without protection. And through the filter – again, a narrow crescent, but in the other direction.
Overall, it was super-mega-extra-awesome!

As they say in Heroes: It happened, I confirm! :D
Actually, it's a fascinating sight! Night turns into day! Awesome!!!! Miracles of nature do exist :)
But in reality, it's not a miracle, and there's an explanation for everything. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon, but it's also 400 times farther from Earth than the moon. Therefore, from Earth, they appear to be the same size! There! We're lucky to have such a moon :D

AWESOME!!!!!!!

P.S.: Interesting fact! They say that animals and birds react differently to an eclipse. Well, nothing like that happened; my parrot clearly showed that it simply doesn't care about what's happening! :)

We had a partial solar eclipse in our city :) I didn't have any filters or sunglasses with me at the time of the eclipse when I was outside :) But there happened to be a building with tinted windows nearby :D I watched the reflection of the sun in the windows of that building. However, nothing special, the sun is just the sun, only... um... cut off by about a quarter :D

Well, I already mentioned in the pub that I saw it too... I was lucky – my dad is a welder, and I watched through a mask; it was actually quite comfortable. The only downside was that it didn't quite block out the sun from below, about 7%.

And in Moscow, it was cloudy =( And I was sleeping at that time

yeah, what a bummer. it was an awesome eclipse. bam! and the whole sky was covered with a veil of clouds. prayers could be heard loudly coming from the church.
in short, the eclipse really got to us :-(
just like in 2006.

Eclipse... it immediately reminds me of the movie Apocalypse Now... how the tribe sacrificed people from another tribe... Overall, it's a great movie... about how our main character survived and came for his pregnant wife...).