Eclipse

Was fun to watch, surprised how I noticed things getting brighter 2 min after the max. Thought it take longer. And we only ha 89% percent

Cheers

Bit late to say it now but if you were that close to the line of totality it is worth travelling a few hundred miles to see a total eclipse. The very last 0.1% obscuration makes all the difference.

Surprisingly uniform and smooth corona considering how active the sun has been recently - I was expecting to see some streamers.

They are truly awe inspiring and I can see why eclipse chasers do it. Everyone should see one if they possibly can. The ancients must have found it completely terrifying to watch the sun get eaten up in the sky.

I thought about going to see this one but the seasonal weather predictions for the track were not so great at this time of year. Several of my US friends went to see it though on the main axis.

I was on the edge of totality. It lasted one and half minutes. It got colder but it didn't get windy and it got darker but not dark enough to see the stars. I could see Jupiter and Venus. The sky was red along the horizon, so it looked like the eclipse was floating above the sunset.

How many planets have intelligent life and a moon the right size and in the right orbit so that someone can see a total eclipse? Our planet is unique in the galaxy.

I traveled from the Chicago suburbs to Kansas City to see the '17 eclipse. Clouds kicked in about 5 minutes before totality but I got to see the darkness fall, cicadas started up, etc.

This time I stayed home. They'd been saying we were to get 94% coverage, but my shadowbox images don't appear to show anything near that -- more like maybe 70% at most. I could see the character of the sunlight got kind of gray, but that was it.

One of the local TV weathermen went to the center of the track, and was literally in tears on the air. I thought it was neat but not neat enough to create emotional turmoil. Granted I didn't experience totality.

We were all on the roof, looking at the eclipse (we got maybe 30% here) and we talked about that. Earth is maybe too good to be an accident.

We're lucky that birds can fly, and water exists in three states, and that we can see the stars.

It was a pretty good show outside Boston at 90%, but yes not at all like a total. It became visibly "mild to moderately dark", like an overcast day. but the drop in the infrared was very noticeable.

What's the best spot to see August 12, 2026? In central Spain the chance of cloud cover is lowest, but it'll be racing the sunset and low on the horizon.

Beach seems better but the chance of clouds will be higher. The sun will be higher in the sky in Reykjavik, but even higher chance of clouds..

It was a pretty good show outside Boston at 90%, but yes not at all like a total. It became visibly "mild to moderately dark", like an overcast day. but the drop in the infrared was very noticeable.

What's the best spot to see August 12, 2026? In central Spain the chance of cloud cover is lowest, but it'll be racing the sunset and low on the horizon.

Beach seems better but the chance of clouds will be higher. The sun will be higher in Reykjavik but chance of clouds higher still..

Just a few high cirrus outside Boston so pretty good viewing weather.

90% coverage here felt like about 35% darker in the visible, but the temperature drop and lack of IR on the skin is very noticeable. Not sure what the incident power has to drop to for it to seem like twilight in visible light as compared to a sunny day, maybe 0.1% of 1000 watts/m^2?

The return of the IR doesn't feel linear either, at some point as coverage wanes it feels like it ramps up from not much to 100% over about 30 seconds.

Bad luck. I chased across Belgium to see the 1999 one after realising that the only chance of finding gaps in the cloud was in Luxemburg. The clouds parted for us just enough to see totality. My friends in the UK (and the BBC coverage) were clouded out.

At 95+% coverage and above you start to get fun effects with shadow bands on the ground and dappled sunlight through trees show crescents. In the last few moments the sun behaves as a semicircular line source and some fun transient diffraction effects happen on the ground. Seldom observed though because most eyes are on the sun itself.

Possible to get very nasty crescent shaped retinal burns in the late stages of an eclipse because the eye iris aperture is wide open but the sun's photosphere is still at 6000K - just less of it.

You have to experience totality itself to understand what it is like. Even rational scientists get very excited at their first total eclipse - they truly are awe inspiring when the sun actually goes out completely!

We had very confused disoriented bats sat on the car bonnet afterwards.

The difference between 99% and totality is literally like between night and day (although it never gets massively dark you can see the brighter stars and planets if you know where to look and the corona is amazing).

Spain if you like it warm. The air is cleaner in Iceland.

I think I'd probably go for Iceland. It is an amazing place to visit for the geology and volcanoes too - some rather too active at the moment.

NASA said that my zip code was 99.1% and it was noticeably darker, much like heavy cloud cover from storms despite the clear sky. But it was still quite easy to drive or even read by < 1% of sunlight.

I've since read that it needs to be 99.9 ~> 100% to have significant impact on the amount of light.

I too have seen and enjoyed the light / shadow effects on the ground that others talked about. I experienced thousands of tiny pinhole camera like from trees / bushes / even building awnings during the 2017 (?) eclipse.

I noticed that the speed of light change was faster at apex and slower away from the apex. I don't know how to describe mathematically much less graph it. It almost seems like a graph of cosine where the X axis is the percentage of light.

I've only seen one total eclipse in my life and it was *awsome* indeed. I was lucky to get into the 100% area just in time to see it and I'll never forget it. I'll be off to Spain in 2026 as it'll give me the chance to go around bare-chested with my belly hanging out, get rat-arsed, eat burgers and throw up in the street like a traditional British tourist in Spain would do (according to the Spanish). Can't wait. ;-)

For some reason no one mentioned that all the planets were lined up, half to the left of the sun and half to the right. They were all above the horizon except Pluto which you couldn't see anyway.

I was stuck in a building and not in the path, but if I had been in the shadow I would have been more interested in the planets. It was a rare oppotunity to see them on the opposite side of the sun.