January starts off giving us a partial solar eclipse, about two weeks after our lunar eclipse (solar and lunar eclipses frequently occur in pairs like this...nothing unusual here!) Unfortunately for us in the Americas, the eclipse is visible from Europe, eastern Asia and northern Africa. Greatest eclipse occurs in northern Sweeden where about 85% of the Sun will be covered.
Partial eclipses are not safe to view with the naked eye. A properly filtered telescope is required or you can make your own pinhole projector. Various companies sell eclipse shades for a few dollars that are safe as well.
For those of us outside the path of the eclipse, we can watch webcasts from people who are in areas where the Sun will be eclipsed. Fortunately, there are several feeds in case one is clouded out. These include Barekat Observatory in Israel, the University of Barcelona and Astronomy Live. I am sure there are others as well, and I may add more as I find them.
Unfortunately, the eclipse begins at 6:40UT, reaches maximum at 8:50UT, and ends at 11:00UT. For the east coast of the U.S., that is at 1:40am EST for the start and 6:00am for the end (EST is five hours behind UT). I might watch the recordings and look at the images when I get up!Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.
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5 comments:
Some years back we had a full solar eclipse in the middle of the day around here. I was working at a Milwaukee hospital and the techs in radiology came up with a novel way to see it. They stacked about 5 sheets of large black Xrays and stapled them together. They were black enough to protect the eyes, but we were still able to see the eclipse through them no problem. Really a neat idea. The did think about charging a buck a peak though.
That would work as long as the x-ray film had a silver emulsion (and if it did, they overdid it a bit as you only need two layers but I would rather use too many than too few!)
The last total solar eclipse in the continental U.S. was in 1979 and it passed through Montana and North Dakota (and I still haven't forgiven my parents for not taking me out of school and driving to the area of totality!) There was an annular eclipse in 1994 that had its maximum path pass through Michigan (where I was at the time) and was probably pretty good in Wisconsin as well.
The next total solar eclipse in the U.S is in 2017 and I am so taking off work to go see it!
I remember going out with a paper plate and doing the pinhole dealy to see it. Must have been 1994, but it doesn't seem like that long ago. Dang, the years go by faster every year.
It was the annular eclipse I was referring to.
Sweden is usually too overcast to be able to see anything this time of year.. I will have to figure out one of those pin hole projectors in case we get some clear weather.. here's to hoping..
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