Search articles from thousands of Examiners
Write for us
Newark Education and Schools SF Science Examiner
SF Science Examiner

Total eclipse of the Sun

August 1, 5:35 AMSF Science ExaminerChristopher Langton
Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe


Get alerts when there is a new article from the SF Science Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.
Email Address


  Include other special offers from Examiner.com
Terms of Use

A total eclipse of the Sun took place on Friday, August 1st, at about 4 a.m. San Francisco time. Although not visible from the United States, the Exploratorium sent a team to a remote corner of China to capture the event.

From 3:30 to 4:30 a.m., the team broadcast live video of the eclipse, with feeds from an array of camera equipped telescopes.

The  results were spectacular!

The Exploratorium team was incredibly lucky: clouds moved in just as the Moon started to transit the face of the Sun, and it was literally only seconds before totality that the Sun broke free of the clouds, allowing a perfect view of the total phase of the eclipse, when the disc of the moon completely hides the disc of the Sun, the sky darkens, the stars come out, and the spectacular solar corona becomes visible to the naked eye. This total phase lasts only a couple of minutes, and the clouds cooperated just long enough for the cameras to capture the entire total phase, before closing in again as the Moon drifted away from the Sun.

With such an array of high quality camera equipped telescopes feeding the webcast, I was able to sit in the comfort of my own home and snap screenshots of the eclipse. Actually, a lot of astronomers do their work this way nowadays anyway, no longer having to trek to remote mountain top observatories, but rather controlling high-tech astronomical instruments from the comfort of their university digs through computer link-ups. Personally, I enjoyed my brief stint as an apprentice astronomer in Tucson Arizona primarily because of the trips up to remote mountain-top observatories, but there's not much need for that anymore.

Here are some pictures snapped from the live webcast (images courtesy of the Exploratorium).

 

The Moon takes its first bite out of the disc of the Sun:



 

A little further along:

 

Approaching totality:

 

Totality!

 

An illustration of the shadow of the Moon crossing the surface of the Earth:

 

Kudos to the Exploratorium for putting together this adventure and for making it so easy to participate.

More About: science

Add a Comment

Name:


Comments:
characters left

NOTE: Do Not Alter These Fields:

Recent Articles

Monday, January 12, 2009
The New Year is off to a bit of a late start as your Science Examiner slipped on some ice and broke his hip(!) while visiting his sainted, grey-haired …
Monday, December 15, 2008
There's quite a bit to do this week for Bay Area science afficianados and/or their visiting relatives. The highlights this week include a lecture by …
Monday, December 8, 2008
The highlight this week is the 40th anniversary celebration of Douglas Engelbart's legendary demonstration of interactive computing. In this one …

Things to see and do

Annual Fruit Sale
10 Nov 2009 -
Galilee United Methodist Church
More special event »
Veteran's Day Celebration
Bergen County YJCC
Parenting Center: Baby and Me
YM-YWHA of North Jersey

Science Humor