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garoteThis is the truth:
I read that viewing a total eclipse can be a life-changing experience. Why? It's just a big light show. I read that there are people called "eclipse chasers" who go from one event to the next trying to experience it repeatedly. Eclipses happen years apart and usually in very inconvenient places on the planet. How could it possibly be worth the trouble?
Well, now that I've seen a total eclipse, I can confidently say that you need to see one to understand why there are "eclipse chasers".
I've seen a partial eclipse before and it was NOTHING compared to this. Honestly, a partial eclipse is a bit dull. We sat around on a lawn with special glasses and watched the sun slowly develop a bite-mark, and then lose it. Shadows were a bit weird. That was it.
This was another level entirely. It was hands-down the most incredible natural phenomenon I have EVER seen. Seriously. And I've seen a few things. Photographs and movies don't do it justice, either. There's a scale factor. Nevertheless it's fun to try and capture at least some of it. Here's a little video I took just as the full eclipse was ending:
It's cute until you remember that I didn't use Hollywood rendering software to make it. That shit was happening in the sky.
So what was it like? Well, at first it was a regular sunny day. Me and my hiking companions set up some hardware, ate snacks, and waited around.
You're probably wondering, what's with the Mad-Max goggles? Well, by the time I tried to get eclipse-safe glasses they were selling for $24 a pop online. Instead I bought some cheapo steampunk costume goggles made from standard welding kit, then replaced the lenses with 50mm shade-14 welding glass.
That's what you gotta get if you're going to stare directly at the sun. You can also stare at light bulb filaments and hot fire with them if you like. (And look fashionable doing it, whaa-chaaaah.)
Yeah yeah, goggles. Blah blah. What was it like?
Well, for about half an hour the entire sky and the valley around us got darker, and colder, until it was basically night time. After a while we could see a few steady dots close to the sun and we realized we were looking at planets, easily visible because they were still lit by full sunlight. That was freaking weird.
Then, the last sliver of direct light was obscured, and everything went much darker and grayer, and the entire sky turned a weird color, and we lowered our glasses, and the sun was gone.
It was gone, and replaced by a MONSTER. To the naked eye, it looked like this:
A writhing blob of white tentacles with a pitch black hole in the center. And around it, a dim, cold horizon with a scattering of planets and stars. It was an H.P. Lovecraft demon apocalypse come to life, perched up there in the sky. Despite all the movies and video games you see with artists' conceptions of dramatic astronomical events - oversize planets, weird moons with rings, et cetera - you are not prepared to see it living in front of you, dominating your own sky. The first thing you feel is a surprisingly deep sense of wrongness -- practically an instinct.
That feeling comes partially from the light show above you, but mostly from the coldness around you. You immediately realize that everything you see - everything - is utterly dependent on sunlight. If the eclipse were to last an entire day, linking the two nights on either side, the entire Earth would cool to 100 degrees below freezing, and EVERYTHING would die. ... With the possible exception of some bacteria down near thermal vents. If the eclipse were to last a week, the atmosphere itself would freeze and fall to the ground. Shortly after that the surface of the Earth would near absolute zero.
A gut-level understanding of this is what you feel when you see the total eclipse in person. You are forced to acknowledge things on a scale far beyond your control, and you realize that hey, ... all your problems don't mean squat. You just have fiddly little monkey problems. Now the sun has been eaten by some galactic albino Elder Thing and you're in the underworld. How does it feel now, to have an actual bona-fide full-size problem?
But wait! The monster hangs there spewing ghastly cold light for only a few minutes. Then KABLAM, a sliver of sun appears, and the nightmare evaporates. The world won't freeze after all. In half an hour the ground is warm again. No trace of the monster, and it's back to your monkey problems.
Even now it's hard to believe I was looking at something real.
Nevertheless, I am certain I'm never going to forget it. And perhaps I will hunt down the next total eclipse in a few years. We'll see.
I read that viewing a total eclipse can be a life-changing experience. Why? It's just a big light show. I read that there are people called "eclipse chasers" who go from one event to the next trying to experience it repeatedly. Eclipses happen years apart and usually in very inconvenient places on the planet. How could it possibly be worth the trouble?
Well, now that I've seen a total eclipse, I can confidently say that you need to see one to understand why there are "eclipse chasers".
I've seen a partial eclipse before and it was NOTHING compared to this. Honestly, a partial eclipse is a bit dull. We sat around on a lawn with special glasses and watched the sun slowly develop a bite-mark, and then lose it. Shadows were a bit weird. That was it.
This was another level entirely. It was hands-down the most incredible natural phenomenon I have EVER seen. Seriously. And I've seen a few things. Photographs and movies don't do it justice, either. There's a scale factor. Nevertheless it's fun to try and capture at least some of it. Here's a little video I took just as the full eclipse was ending:
It's cute until you remember that I didn't use Hollywood rendering software to make it. That shit was happening in the sky.
So what was it like? Well, at first it was a regular sunny day. Me and my hiking companions set up some hardware, ate snacks, and waited around.
You're probably wondering, what's with the Mad-Max goggles? Well, by the time I tried to get eclipse-safe glasses they were selling for $24 a pop online. Instead I bought some cheapo steampunk costume goggles made from standard welding kit, then replaced the lenses with 50mm shade-14 welding glass.
That's what you gotta get if you're going to stare directly at the sun. You can also stare at light bulb filaments and hot fire with them if you like. (And look fashionable doing it, whaa-chaaaah.)
Yeah yeah, goggles. Blah blah. What was it like?
Well, for about half an hour the entire sky and the valley around us got darker, and colder, until it was basically night time. After a while we could see a few steady dots close to the sun and we realized we were looking at planets, easily visible because they were still lit by full sunlight. That was freaking weird.
Then, the last sliver of direct light was obscured, and everything went much darker and grayer, and the entire sky turned a weird color, and we lowered our glasses, and the sun was gone.
It was gone, and replaced by a MONSTER. To the naked eye, it looked like this:
A writhing blob of white tentacles with a pitch black hole in the center. And around it, a dim, cold horizon with a scattering of planets and stars. It was an H.P. Lovecraft demon apocalypse come to life, perched up there in the sky. Despite all the movies and video games you see with artists' conceptions of dramatic astronomical events - oversize planets, weird moons with rings, et cetera - you are not prepared to see it living in front of you, dominating your own sky. The first thing you feel is a surprisingly deep sense of wrongness -- practically an instinct.
That feeling comes partially from the light show above you, but mostly from the coldness around you. You immediately realize that everything you see - everything - is utterly dependent on sunlight. If the eclipse were to last an entire day, linking the two nights on either side, the entire Earth would cool to 100 degrees below freezing, and EVERYTHING would die. ... With the possible exception of some bacteria down near thermal vents. If the eclipse were to last a week, the atmosphere itself would freeze and fall to the ground. Shortly after that the surface of the Earth would near absolute zero.
A gut-level understanding of this is what you feel when you see the total eclipse in person. You are forced to acknowledge things on a scale far beyond your control, and you realize that hey, ... all your problems don't mean squat. You just have fiddly little monkey problems. Now the sun has been eaten by some galactic albino Elder Thing and you're in the underworld. How does it feel now, to have an actual bona-fide full-size problem?
But wait! The monster hangs there spewing ghastly cold light for only a few minutes. Then KABLAM, a sliver of sun appears, and the nightmare evaporates. The world won't freeze after all. In half an hour the ground is warm again. No trace of the monster, and it's back to your monkey problems.
Even now it's hard to believe I was looking at something real.
Nevertheless, I am certain I'm never going to forget it. And perhaps I will hunt down the next total eclipse in a few years. We'll see.
The eclipse gathering:
Date: 2017-08-29 02:26 am (UTC)