Eclipse Party

As a kid i was fascinated by astronomy.  Of course this was when the Gemini and Apollo missions were going on and that helped, but i really loved the movement of the planets in particular and i couldn't learn enough about it.  I subscribed to the newsletters and magazines… not the ones for kids, but for adults, for astronomers.  And i desperately wanted a telescope.  In 1977 my dad gave me 4½ inch reflector which i still have and still use.

Eclipses are one of the most fascinating things about planetary astronomy.  The moon is one of my favorite things and i think it's amazing when the moon moves between me and the sun.  Orbital dynamics are so cool.

There was a 94% eclipse in my front yard in Washington DC when i was 6 years old.  We ran inside to watch totality (in North Carolina) on TV in the basement and then ran outside again.  From that time onward i really wanted to see a total eclipse.  I had my hopes set on 1979 in Montana or 1991 in Mexico.

I saw both of those eclipses, but only as partial eclipses from home.  In 1979 i went to a friend's farm and i used my telescope to project the 55% eclipse.  In 1991, i couldn't make it to Mexico, but there were people projecting the 21% eclipse at the electronics company that i worked at in Wisconsin. Finally in 1999 i traveled to Germany to see a Total Solar Eclipse.  I was extremely lucky to find a friend who took me to an amazing hillside in the path of 100% and then got very lucky when the clouds parted at exactly the right time.

I had been looking forward to yesterday's eclipse for a long time;  we haven't had a partial solar eclipse in Seattle for 10 years -- usually it's only 2 or 3 years between them.

For 6 months i have been planning an eclipse party at the park.  As Sunday May 20th approached, i was quite excited.  I was not particularly disturbed by the rainy forecast.  I was, as always, optimistic.  I would be happy with just a peek through the clouds.  In fact, sometimes you can see the disk of the sun through thin clouds and it acts like a filter.  I was kind of hoping for that.

I packed up my "big" telescope in my bike trailer.  I also brought 5 or 6 smaller hand held telescopes, binoculars, sun filters for the telescope, aluminized mylar for direct viewing, eclipse glasses from Germany 1999, a camera, cards and paper to make pin hole cameras, tripods for mounting pin hole cameras, a globe and some balls (for demonstrations) and cookies.

I rode up to Volunteer Park in the rain.  The trailer tracked nicely and smoothly, and felt fine, but i did try to ride gently and did my best to avoid bumpy pavement.   I arrived at the park right at 5pm.  I set out the bright red plastic telescope on the platform and stood by my bike looking at the clouds.  I was ready.

We were due to have a partial solar eclipse starting at 17:01.  The moon was going to move between the earth and the sun.  Slowly over about 2 and half hours the moon would start to cover the sun, starting with just a little bite and then slide off the other side. At it's greatest point, at about 6:15 pm, the moon was going to cover 82% of the sun.

The eclipse was annular in parts of Japan, the Pacific and Nevada, but not here;  it was a partial eclipse here.  In Portland my brother was going to see a partial eclipse with 87% coverage, and down in Nevada it would be an annular eclipse with the moon covering 95% of the sun, leaving only a ring (an annulus in Latin) of sun around the edges of the moon.  They will see the mountains on the moon!  That's pretty amazing.

Of course in the months approaching the eclipse there was not a peep about it in the newspapers, on the radio, TV & websites and then in the two days beforehand the media went batshit crazy reading off any idiotic thing they could find, occasionally even finding something that was true.  I couldn't believe how much mistaken and just made up things they broadcast as eclipse news.

And by the way NPR and Cliff Mass, and others, it's an annular eclipse, not an annual eclipse!  Duh.

You also heard again and again the silly scare tactics about eclipses making you go blind.  Staring at the sun is bad for your eyes, but staring at the sun also really HURTS and so if you try, you just look away and amazingly, that prevents damage.  The other, perhaps more important thing is that staring at the sun during an eclipse won't help you see the eclipse!  The sun is too bright.  So it won't help and it hurts so no one is going to do it, but they keep repeating the thoughtless frightening alerts because the of old superstition of eclipses being portents of evil.   They are not evil and you won't go blind.

To watch an eclipse you either have a filter to protect your eyes, aluminized mylar works very well i have a thick piece for my telescope and a thin one for direct viewing, or you project it on a white card using a pin hole, binoculars or as i planned on doing, a telescope.  It's the same for viewing sunspots on a normal sunny day, which i do frequently.

I had invited a lot of people to come join me, i was hoping for a party, but with the prospect of rain i wasn't expecting many.  A few people did come and one friend waited out the whole thing with me which i really appreciated..  I also figured that my telescope might attract some passersby because even at 82% of the sun covered on a sunny day, people wouldn't be likely to notice unless they were looking.  The sun is so bright that even that much blocked wouldn't be readily apparent.

Seattle sun view at 18:17 (May 20, 2012 partial eclipse)

I stood in the rain watched the clouds but they didn't clear or even thin.  I didn't see anything.  I was a little disappointed.  A little peek would've been nice.  But i enjoyed the time in the park.  And it wasn't a complete loss:  i was very pleased that i managed to carry my fragile, expensive, not small telescope by bicycle!  I packed a thick fleece blanket around it in a plastic tub on my one-wheeled trailer.

The next eclipse is in 4 years. (Not 60 like i heard on the TV news.)  In fact, there are two partial eclipses visible in Seattle in the next 5 years, both pretty big. 

Oct 23 2014  start 12:35  end 15:19  max at 14:00 - 55%  
Aug 21 2017 start 08:08  end 10:38  max at 09:20 - 92%

In that on in 2017 the narrow path of totality will pass nearby, it will go through Salem Oregon.  That's biking distance from here!

Here in Seattle, before  yesterday, we were 120 months without a partial solar eclipse, the longest wait in 200 years.  The 1990s were good, with a big cluster of eclipses about a year apart, now we're entering a period of 3 to 4 years between them here.

Here's a graphic i made of all the eclipses visible from Seattle between 1900 and 2100. The date is along the bottom and the height is the months wait since the last eclipse. The size of the circle indicates (slightly confusingly) the amount of the sun that is eclipsed:  bigger is more.  Total eclipses would be the largest circle and filled in.  There are none. The last total solar eclipse visible from the (current) city limits of Seattle was July 18, 1860 and the next one will be May 17, 2645.

Notice yesterday's eclipse at the top of the chart. I've put the year on a few notable ones.

I've been in the path of 18 solar eclipses, and i've seen at least 6.  All were partial eclipses except for the 1999 Total Solar Eclipse that i traveled half way around the world to see.

In December 2001 there was a tiny little 8% partial solar eclipse which i saw from my apartment.  I used my telescope to project the eclipse on the ceiling.  It was really cool.  In June 2002 i took my telescope out to Seacrest Park on Elliot Bay in West Seattle for the 37% eclipse in the evening.

So since there are no photos of today's eclipse, here are a couple from the December 2001 eclipse that i projected on my ceiling.  It was a very small eclipse, only 8%.  Notice the red plastic telescope in the bottom of the photo, that is what.is projecting the image.

2001-12-14 Solar Eclipse in Seattle (c) Mark Canizaro

2001-12-14 Solar Eclipse in Seattle (c) Mark Canizaro