Re: [Plplot-devel] <off topic> Solar eclipse coming for North America in 4 days!

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On 2017-08-17 11:39-0000 Schwartz, Steven J wrote:

> Just to add a few cents' worth here, there are excellent resources at:
>
> http://www.eclipse2017.org/
>
> concerning where, when, what, how. While I would echo Alan's enthusiasm that being prepared and seeing a partial eclipse is better than missing it altogether, I'd also echo the comment on the above website under "The path of totality" which has a page "'Close' is not close enough!" I fought with my spouse to travel from the south of France to be on the French coast of the English channel for the 1999 eclipse over the question of "close". I won that fight and the instant we exited from totality she turned to me and asked "When's the next one?". Totality enables you to see the solar corona which is too faint against a 90 or 95% eclipsed Sun. And watch the animals respond.
>
> And by way of small correction, solar eclipses themselves are not rare, they occur every year or two. They're not always full eclipses and, as the planet is 75% covered by water, not often visible on land and certainly not cutting a swathe across North America.
>
> Under no circumstances look at the sun with the naked eye (or directly through a camera lens or binoculars) apart from during totality (this is one of those required health warnings). Alan's box will work well to watch the moon's advancement over the solar disc. Viewing glasses are quite cheap, but be careful as I'm told some being sold are fake.
>
> Happy viewing

All excellent points.

Alan

__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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