The Eclipse Conspiracy

I was able to gather up my entire immediate family, which is no easy feat these days, and we drove about four hours to a tiny town in South Carolina.This was my first solar eclipse and for me, the trip was totally worth it. I would have driven twice that far. We left home about 12 hours before the eclipse. There was minimal traffic. I was totally pumped for the whole "expedition" and enjoyed every minute of the trip. My family, with the exception of my daughter, are far less interested in astronomy. But my wife was just excited for me. I awarded her 2000 hubby points just for being herself. But the four of us were equally impressed with the eclipse itself.Totality was way better than any eclipse picture or video I have ever seen. The corona was spectacular. I was yelling and practically drooling on myself. The corona is a moving twisting, shining, beautiful halo of white gas, shining like a diamond, yet shimmering, vibrating... I'm running out of verbs and adjectives. I completely get why people chase these things.The funniest part of the trip was my wife was taking photos and almost missing the first moment of totality until I took the camera away from her. We were using phones to take pictures which did not have produce anything as striking as the ones Tanypteryx shows here. My daughter did get a pretty good photo of near totality. Absolutely not the same. I was staring through filters as that last sliver disappeared and then I yelled "take off your glasses" immediately after. No part of an eclipse, except the very end when Bailey's Beads Effect shows up, compares favorably with the start of totality. And it is pretty much over after that.We did not stay for much of the post totality part. We got back in the car and fought traffic back to North Carolina. Took way longer to get home than it did to get there. Of course, the eclipse sights dominated the conversation on the way back. We talked a little bit about 2024 and how difficult/easy it might be to get to other eclipses before that one. Me too.In Newberry, South Carolina, the sky did not get very dark. Darkness was about like dusk. The crickets were chirping loudly even before totality. Only a few very bright stars were visible. Venus was the only planet I noticed. Mars was not visible. I was looking for Regulus which was near the sun, but I could not see it.I'd like to compare notes with someone who saw the eclipse on the west coast.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Both your statement and your fantastic pictures hint at a completely different experience from what I saw/heard/lived through. I pulled into a tiny South Carolina town I will probably never have another reason to visit. The town held an eclipse festival, but we ignored pretty much the fanfare except for a visit to the snack trucks and waiting in a twenty-minute line to get free eclipse glasses.The town folk did try to gouge folks for 15 dollars for parking, but I got in town really early that morning and parked behind an old, no longer in service library building for free. We watched the eclipse from there with about 15 other folks. A few dark clouds interrupted viewing for a while when totality was still under 50 percent or so. That was a bit disappointing, but there was clear viewing from then on.I hope to learn enough about photography to take some good pictures next time. Thanks for sharing yours.

It was partial in your part of Europe. That 1999 spectacle was the last eclipse that was total over large parts of Europe. A review of historical information suggests that there have not been very many eclipses that have been total over large parts of Europe during the past century or more. The next one meeting that description not until 2081, and if you are insisting that the eclipse comes to all the way to you, you will have to wait until 2135.On the other hand, eclipses that are total over large parts of the US are pretty rare as well. This past one was special in that the moon's shadow was over a diagonal path across the US, starting in the Pacific Ocean, west of the northern west coast, and extending off of the southern US east coast. There is not much room to draw in a path more favorable for Americans. You are just unlucky. Solar eclipses that exhibit totality over large areas of Europe are rare, but European total eclipses are not so rare. Total solar eclipses in your home town, are of course really rare for all but a lucky few of us.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I think you've nailed it. There is also the issue that the major axis of the moon's orbit actually rotates within the plane of the moon's orbit and the fact that the lunar cycle is not an even fraction of a year. All of those things make the eclipse cycles complex, but folks at similar latitudes ought to experience the same number of eclipses over large spans of time.

Some solar eclipses are more predictable than others. There is a Saros cycle under which a series of eclipses repeats every 18 years 11 days and 8 hours. Because of the fraction days + fraction, the earth rotates between those cycles so that the path of totality rotates. Every 3 Saros cycles there is another eclipse on the same side of the earth on a roughly parallel path.So eclipses of a given Saros cycle are predictable. But there are more than one saros cycles in operation at a given time[1], so if you are only looking at eclipses on a single Saros cycle you will miss many eclipses. But the first predictions were of subsequent eclipses from the same Saros cycle.A single human is able to observe several repeats of the same Saros cycle, so it is possible for a single human to pick up the pattern during his lifetime.[1] Active Saros cycles for 20 and 21st-century http://members.bitstream.net/bunlion/bpi/ActSaros.html

I was going to complain about the math, but I won't.The Wikipedia article indicates that this particular "hole" theory does not work.

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More recent examination, notably by Richard Atkinson, has proved Hawkins largely wrong as it is now established that the different features at the monument that he tried to incorporate into many of his alignment theories were in use at different times and could not have worked alone, the lateness of the installation of the Heel Stone being the final nail in the coffin. Furthermore, the 56-year period is not in fact a reliable method of predicting eclipses and it is now accepted that they never repeat their date and position over three consecutive 18.61-year-long lunar cycles.

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Yeah, me too. I remember getting excited about some earlier presentations about Stonehenge as an astronomical calculator, but to date, most of the hypotheses that involve the moon have been debunked.In particular, though, the Saros cycle is 18 years 11.3 days. Not 18.61 years. The Saros cycle does work for predicting eclipses.