Boston-centric eclipse info
Mar. 23rd, 2024 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nosrednaydujI wrote up some info about the total eclipse of the sun on Monday, April 8 for another group, and thought I would share it here also.
This eclipse covers the entire continental United States, though most people will see only a partial eclipse, unless they travel. In the Boston area, it will be about 95% coverage, so there will be some eclipse effects of "thin light", and it could get colder than you might expect. There will be totality in Vermont and upstate New York. Unfortunately, the probability of cloud cover is fairly high (70%) in New England, so it might be a bust here. Valerie, Ken, and I are traveling to Texas, where the probability of cloud cover is 40%. So it is less likely to be a bust, but if it is, we will be much sadder than somebody who planned to look out the window in the morning and get in their car if it was good.
My favorite website for figuring out what time is maximum eclipse and so forth is https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2024-april-8 . In the Boston area maximum coverage will be around 3:30pm. The partial eclipse is quite long, starting around 2:15 and ending around 4:40. There are various phone apps to help you figure out exactly what's going on in real time. I downloaded one ("Totality by Big Kid Science"), but I don't really have a particular recommendation.
If you do decide to drive to totality, you don't need to get very far in before you get a decent length of time of totality. The graph of "time vs. distance from centerline" is a half-circle (the shape of the moon's shadow), which means that it changes very rapidly at the beginning between zero and "noticeable"; there's some sine/cosine thing going on. So similarly, as you approach centerline, you get more seconds of totality, but not that many per mile traveled. There's a nice video demonstration of this, showing the shadow traveling across the land, on a different website, https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/april-8-2024 . Also, this eclipse is longer than average -- the maximum time is more than four minutes -- so getting close to centerline is really not important. Be prepared for traffic, if the skies are clear, because a lot of people will be making this decision at the last minute. And be prepared for traffic on the way home. When we went to Oregon in 2017, the traffic jam was substantial.
Whether or not you get to totality, my favorite way to enjoy a partial eclipse is to take a standard kitchen colander and use it as a hundred pinhole cameras. Use a blank sheet of paper for the colander to cast its shadow onto, and you will get many small images of the sun with bites taken out of it. I saw a photo of somebody having done this also with a saltine cracker. It may already be too late to acquire eclipse glasses unless you already have them. Don't just try looking at the sun with just your sunglasses!
Partial eclipses are nothing like total eclipses. I like to say that if a partial eclipse is like looking at a painting of a beach, a total eclipse is getting wet.
This eclipse covers the entire continental United States, though most people will see only a partial eclipse, unless they travel. In the Boston area, it will be about 95% coverage, so there will be some eclipse effects of "thin light", and it could get colder than you might expect. There will be totality in Vermont and upstate New York. Unfortunately, the probability of cloud cover is fairly high (70%) in New England, so it might be a bust here. Valerie, Ken, and I are traveling to Texas, where the probability of cloud cover is 40%. So it is less likely to be a bust, but if it is, we will be much sadder than somebody who planned to look out the window in the morning and get in their car if it was good.
My favorite website for figuring out what time is maximum eclipse and so forth is https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2024-april-8 . In the Boston area maximum coverage will be around 3:30pm. The partial eclipse is quite long, starting around 2:15 and ending around 4:40. There are various phone apps to help you figure out exactly what's going on in real time. I downloaded one ("Totality by Big Kid Science"), but I don't really have a particular recommendation.
If you do decide to drive to totality, you don't need to get very far in before you get a decent length of time of totality. The graph of "time vs. distance from centerline" is a half-circle (the shape of the moon's shadow), which means that it changes very rapidly at the beginning between zero and "noticeable"; there's some sine/cosine thing going on. So similarly, as you approach centerline, you get more seconds of totality, but not that many per mile traveled. There's a nice video demonstration of this, showing the shadow traveling across the land, on a different website, https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/april-8-2024 . Also, this eclipse is longer than average -- the maximum time is more than four minutes -- so getting close to centerline is really not important. Be prepared for traffic, if the skies are clear, because a lot of people will be making this decision at the last minute. And be prepared for traffic on the way home. When we went to Oregon in 2017, the traffic jam was substantial.
Whether or not you get to totality, my favorite way to enjoy a partial eclipse is to take a standard kitchen colander and use it as a hundred pinhole cameras. Use a blank sheet of paper for the colander to cast its shadow onto, and you will get many small images of the sun with bites taken out of it. I saw a photo of somebody having done this also with a saltine cracker. It may already be too late to acquire eclipse glasses unless you already have them. Don't just try looking at the sun with just your sunglasses!
Partial eclipses are nothing like total eclipses. I like to say that if a partial eclipse is like looking at a painting of a beach, a total eclipse is getting wet.
