Sunday, July 19, 2009

Solar Eclipse

Looks like I might get to see a "very close to full" eclipse of the sun on the 22nd of July around 10:50am. The full eclipse will be just north of us so we won't get the full meal deal but pretty darn close, which is cool since I haven't been in a location to see a solar eclipse in forever.

I remember when I was a kid, my dad went off to see one, I am not sure where he went for it but he brought back some cool pictures. I thought it was prett interesting. As kids, our parents were always pointing out the unique things in the skies to us. We would watch lightening storms from under the picnic table in the back yard. We watched for days and days for Skylab to fall in the 70s and we always watched the meteor showers in the August skies.

I have a pretty decent telescope now but I need to see if I can find some solar eclipse sunglasses here somewhere. I would like to get some pictures and even some video if I can through the telescope but I don't want to chance hurting my eyes. According to Wikipedia's website, you can watch it through a video camera or digital output without hurting your eyes but just going through the telescope, viewfinder on a camera or looking at it directly could be very bad. If I were to get the full eclipse, I could watch that but since we will be a bit off, it will never be complete and therefore dangerous at all times during the event.

This site has a lot of info on the eclipse as well as the links for webcasts from my part of the world if you want to check them out.

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Two Years Ago on In My Words...Lunar Eclipse

2 comments:

Haha said...

Your father went to Washington to view that eclipse when we lived in Phoenix in the townhouse. There is a replica of Stonehenge and many Druids were there during the eclipse. I think this was 1978 or 79. Do you remember how quiet it became and then the cock crowed when it passed back into daylight. It was awesome, I hope you get a good look!

... said...

I remembered that it was when we lived in Phoenix but I couldn't remember where he went. I am looking forward to seeing this one. Looks like I will probably have to make a pinhole viewer since I am not going to be able to find the glasses here...already sold out.