La revanche des calmars » « Checking in, briefly

Rare footage of a solar eclipse

Here’s an awesome video of the most recent solar eclipse that took place a couple of weeks ago. This group was lucky enough to witness the eclipse from their airplane seats! You can see the eclipse pretty much from start to finish. Wait it out until the end, because it’s an amazing view when the sun comes back out. (Posted by LisaJ).

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Comments

  3. Danio says

    Listening to the people recording the event geeking out about it in the background was hilarious. It was VERY cool! Once on an airplane I met a woman who, in her well-heeled retirement, was traveling around the world to the site of every total solar eclipse. What an amazing hobby!

  7. says

    Didn’t know that totality only lasted two minutes.

    IIRC, it can be as much as 8 minutes or so.

    But it depends on how close the moon is to earth, as well as where you are in the shadow. It could only be total for a second, if just the “tip of the shadow” passes across you.

    Then again, in the more common annular eclipses (more common than total, that is), it’s never total, because the moon simply isn’t close enough to “blot out the sun.”

    Glen D
    http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

  9. Kaddath says

    I’ll never forget the only total solar eclipse I’ve seen.. it was back in the late 80’s when I lived in Mexico… saw it from a pyramid south of Mexico City that overlooked a huge valley… still got the photos I took with a puny zoom lens.
    Now I live in Canada but Nunavut is still a long shot from here so this video is as close as I will see it.

  11. Longtime Lurker says

    MMM… donut shaped sun… UHHH…

    Blotting out the sun?

    Alright, I’ll stop with the Simpsons geekery. Now, isn’t it nice to just bask in the beauty of the natural universe without having to invoke a Bronze-Age invisible monster?

  12. Peter Vaht says

    Look for other youtube videos, they show it a lot closer, incredible sight indeed, makes us humans feel very small, justly so, Carl Sagan would have loved to have seen this.

  13. negentropyeater says

    according to the map above (see post #5) it should have lasted a bit less than 1’40”, but the plane must have been moving in the opposite direction, so it seems it lasted a little bit more than 1’40” on the movie.

    Correct or not ?

  14. Uygar says

    Glen, does the fact that observers are themselves moving rather than fixed have any bearing on the duration of the observed eclipse, or is plane’s velocity too small to be significant?

  19. Jason Dick says

    Very nice! I especially liked how you could see the shadow of the Moon moving across the atmosphere.

  20. SteveM says

    according to the map above (see post #5) it should have lasted a bit less than 1’40”, but the plane must have been moving in the opposite direction, so it seems it lasted a little bit more than 1’40” on the movie.

    I would say that for it to last longer you would have to be moving in the same direction.

    does the fact that observers are themselves moving rather than fixed have any bearing on the duration of the observed eclipse, or is plane’s velocity too small to be significant?

    Yes it does in deed matter which way and how fast they are moving and airplane speeds are not insignificant. Planes are commonly chartered to fly in the shadows path in order to extend the (apparent) duration of an eclipse.

  21. Sastra says

    Ok, does anyone remember the nick of the theist who came into one of the Pharyngula threads a few months ago with a big, elaborate proof of God (and a website) based on the too-amazing coincidence of the moon and sun being just the right distance apart to cover each other in a total eclipse? In some photos, it looked like a giant eye up in the sky — solid evidence that God has been showing Himself to His creatures through the ages. It’s inconceivable that nature alone could do this!

    This video is cool, but not that cool.

  22. LeeLeeOne says

    Total eclipse recorded and viewable – I feel is really extordinary because from the sound in combination with the video, we are all experiencing not only the eclipse from their vantage point through their lens, but we are also experiencing their enthusiasm! Unaltered (hopefully).

    The vast majority of us look on the daily sunrise and sunset without much thought. When something out of the ordinary occurs, more may see this event, but they fail to either/and/or recognize the cosmology behind such an occurrence, especially with an interplanetary involvement!

    Twas beautiful Video and sound! Thank you. It made my day!!!

    IN REGARD TO “OT” COMMENT REGARDING CHRIS COMER LEGAL ISSUES

    From what I have read, I feel that this is deserves an address directly by PZ and/or PZ’s “minions” (aka readership).

    If nothing else, it would/could be a good ground for discussion.

    From what my grandma said “It’s them lil’ stuff tha’ comz-a-bit’n ya’all in the savenbeejeezuspeeetuteeee.” (last word definition – ass aka butt, aka arse)

  23. Longtime Lurker says

    Another off-topic post, but Michele Bachmann is at it again:

    “[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she’s just trying to save the planet,” Bachmann told the right-wing news site OneNewsNow. “We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet — we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that.”

    http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/mn06/

  24. Aristotle says

    Hold on.

    Does not a Solar Eclipse go against the Bible?

    And look here, SCIENTIST talk about ‘Solar Eclipses’ trying to promote their atheist ideas and get more money for ‘research’. I thinks its very obvious that this is, like Evolution and other ‘facts’ a fraud. A another way to make the scientist get money.

    How come only a VERY FEW ‘elite’ see these eclipses? Of course, our money grabbing atheist scientists have an answer for this.

    Disgusting

  25. negentropyeater says

    Uygar #14

    you can see on this other map of the path of the eclipse over the northern hemisphere, that the center of the Totality moves at approx. 4000 km/h (which will vary depending on location) on the surface of the planet.
    http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEmono/TSE2008/TSE2008iau/TSE2008-fig02.GIF

    For a fixed observer located east of Cambrdge Bay, Nunavut, Canada, on the path of the center of the eclipse, it would last say 1m30s. But if the observer were moving in a plane alongside this path at 900 km/h, it would augment or diminish the duration significantly (up to 15s) depending on wether the plane were moving same or opposite direction and how well the plane follows exactly this path.

    And SteveM got it right, they must have been moving same direction, the video lasts approx. 10s more than it would have on a fixed point, probably a north eastern route, wonder if this wasn’t taken on a commercial airliner from US pacific coast to Europe ?

  26. Salt says

    Posted by: negentropyeater | August 14, 2008 2:55 PM
    Lucky guys to have been able to contemplate and film this from an airplane, wonderful !

    Posted by: Sastra | August 14, 2008 4:57 PM
    In some photos, it looked like a giant eye up in the sky — solid evidence that God has been showing Himself to His creatures through the ages. It’s inconceivable that nature alone could do this!

    This video is cool, but not that cool.

    Nothing to contemplate here. Move along.

    (cool vid though)

  29. wayne robinson says

    I was fortunate enough to be in Novosibirsk on August 1 for the total solar eclipse, and it was amazing with perfect viewing conditions. Before it started, it was quite windy, and as the eclipse approached the wind died away to nothing, then it started to go dark and cool, the dogs started barking, and with totality it was very dark and very cool. Then as the eclipse receded, the dogs started barking again and then the roosters starting crowing. I’m looking forward to the next total solar eclipse, my second (July 22, 2009, probably in China). This will be the longest total solar eclipse this century, approximately 6+ minutes depending on your location. The length of an eclipse depends largely on the path the moon’s shadow takes across the surface of the earth. The recent one’s path was very oblique passing through Canada, the Arctic, into Siberia and then China. The next one will be largely going along a parallel of latitude so that the earth’s rotation will keep up partially with the moon’s shadow, and prolong the eclipse (like being in a plane following the eclipse). NASA has very good material on future and past eclipses
    http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/solar.html
    including video of this one from China.

  30. negentropyeater says

    Nothing to contemplate here. Move along.

    What do you mean nothing to contemplate ?

    I had to check it up in the dictionary (sometimes I use words in English, but because I’m French, especially this kind of word which are similar in both languages, I get confused), but it does mean :

    contemplate : to view or consider with continued attention

    That’s what I’d have done if I had been in that fucking plane, probably also put some earplugs to avoid all the stupid background comments.

  31. Qwerty says

    I can remember seeing a partial eclipse of the sun when I was young. We were told to look at the shadows cast by tree leaves as they acted like a pinhole. True enough, it worked.

  32. Robert says

    Nice video, thought it would have been better with no sound. Talk about loud, obnoxious Americans!

  33. Peter says

    As others have said the speed of the aircraft can significantly extend the duration of total eclipse for airborne observers. The speed of the lunar shadow relative to a stationary observer on the ground can be as “slow” as about 2000 km/h. A regular passenger airliner such as a 747 can only achieve about 900 km/h but a supersonic craft such as the Concorde can keep up and this has been done before: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v246/n5428/abs/246072a0.html

    In this case the aircraft was further disadvantaged by the low altitude of the eclipse. When the eclipse is high in the sky the ideal path to fly to keep up is parallel to the ground, but when the eclipsed sun is low the ideal path is at a steep angle to the ground so the aircraft can only gain a little (about 15 seconds in this case). The flight mentioned in the article above was able to do much better.

  34. another says

    #32 Robert:

    “Talk about loud, obnoxious Americans!”

    Hmm… To these ears they sound like loud, excited Canadians enjoying a remarkable event that comes along only a few times in life even if you’re lucky.

    But you could be right.

  36. Naked Bunny with a Whip says

    thought it would have been better with no sound.

    It’s called “mute”. Take a little responsibility for your own actions.

  39. Andy says

    This did not look quite how I expected somehow. First you could see the sun, then it looked like there was a segment out of the bottom right. Then suddenly there was a smaller bright circular image (bright in contrast with the atmosphere) with a black dot in the centre. Is this a diffraction pattern of the Sun’s light around the moon?

    I was sort of expecting a segment out of the Sun to gradually grow until it eventually became fully covered and indistinguishable from the black background, followed by the reverse.

    Can somebody interpret the images for me?

  40. zilch says

    Yep, Andy, that film must have had some artifacts from the camera: that’s not how an eclipse looks. And the solar corona the observers were talking about was simply not visible in the film.

    By the way, there will be a partial lunar eclipse this Sunday, August the 17th. Be there or be square.

  41. Mike M says

    I guess we can expect some hot squid action on Bad Astronomy.

    I’m sure Phil’s retaliation will be merciless.