Animal behavior during a solar eclipse

I was several hundred miles north of the path of totality for the 2017 eclipse. I walked around the path outside my office during the event. Even though it wasn't total, there was a noticable dimming outside and it actually started feeling cold. I'm sure the effect would be far more pronounced had it been a total eclipse, but it was definitely noticable where I was.

> achingly beautiful

Wonderfully put. I didn't get to observe any particular changes in animal behavior out in the desert, but the change from partial to total eclipse is dramatic and incomparable.

The stars come out against a sudden twilight blue sky with the eclipse blazing overhead. And when it suddenly ended, I could understand why some people become eclipse chasers.

Definitely worth driving out--plus the long drive back in all that traffic--and sleeping in the car that weekend!

I was there because I just happen to have relatives who lived right in the path, but I was totally blown away. I wish I could convey the experience to people who weren't there. It was interesting as it approached, but once it reached totality it was pretty shocking. It felt a bit like the end of the world. All of the sudden it's dark outside, but not quite the same darkness as night. There's a sunset on the horizon in every direction. Bats are randomly flying around. And in the sky there's this celestial body you've never seen. It's not like the sun and not like the moon. And while your brain is still reeling and people are still gasping and yelling and pointing everything out, it's over.

Anyways, 10/10 would recommend.

Yes, I completely concur. A partial solar eclipse or a total lunar eclipse are just funny meteorological phenomena, like a meteor shower or a double rainbow. Neat, but not a big deal. A total solar eclipse is a completely mind melting experience. It feels like the end of the universe.

Yeah, we perceive "brightness" on a roughly logarithmic scale, and most people don't intuitively understand what that means.

In a total solar eclipse, it takes an hour or so to go from full sunlight to totality, but the majority of the apparent change in brightness happens during the last minute. And in turn, the majority of the change during the final minute is compressed into the last few seconds.

If you're just a few miles outside the path of totality, those final seconds are what you're missing, and the difference is literally night and day.

Agreed! As luck would have it I was in the Carolinas for the 2017 eclipse so I drove to be in the path of totality. What an incredible experience, I am so glad I had the opportunity and made the effort, it's so worth it. And yes, absolutely, there's a massive difference between 98% and full eclipse -- if you're that close, make the trip!!!

The next eclipse in North America is on April 8th 2024 [0] I'll absolutely be making the trip even if I have to hitch-hike or walk!

[0] https://www.space.com/great-american-solar-eclipse-2024-four...

I was outside of the totality in 2017 but only just barely. My friends who were in the totality insist that what I saw wasn't as good but their pictures look identical to what I saw.

Considering they were in a farm field and I was on top of a mountain with a view of several volcanoes, I'm not sure I would trade my view for theirs just because it was a little darker.

With that said, maybe you've seen an eclipse from just outside the totality and maybe it is truly different?

I drove four hours out and eight hours back to get to totality. I slept in the bed of my truck alone on the side of the road.

It was absolutely worth it. There are a lot of experiences like being in love or eating an amazing meal where the visual obviously doesn't convey it. And there are some like seeing a comet where an image of the experience isn't too far from "being there".

A total eclipse lies in the uncanny valley between those where you can see lots of neat photos that make you think you can imagine what the experience is like. But you cannot. The difference between a picture of a total eclipse and being in the path of totality is like the difference between a picture of the moon and walking on the moon.

It is an incredible, enveloping, irreplaceable experience. It's about as close to magic as we get on Earth. I don't like telling people lists of things they "should" do before they die, but I am sure as hell glad I can now put it on the list of things I did do.

For what it's worth, here's a timelapse I took:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsuxK81KnPw

But, again, the video doesn't really convey anything about the experience, especially not because the camera automatically adjusts to the massive change in light levels. To get a sense of how much darker it is during totality, here's two photos I took at the same vantage with the same settings before and during totality:

https://imgur.com/gallery/fuGS6

We took a flight to South Carolina to stay at a cheap motel with a grubby pool patio, where we set up shop with our welder's goggles - so cheap, we brought a huge pile for giving to kids who might not know they were super lucky astronomers that day.

The thing that really made the trip worth making was the /incredible/ temperature drop. It was as though outer space was reaching down to give the slightest of taps on the shoulder "I'm always right there, no matter how bright blue it is".

If you're an armchair astronomer - I heavily encourage you to make the trip to be at ground zero of a total eclipse if you find yourself fortunate enough to be able to. I'm not sure I'll need to do it twice in this life, but wow, what an incredible event.

It was unreal to be on higher ground, and see light on the horizon all around, but have it be dark above. It also became eerily quiet. I will make an effort to be in the path of a total eclipse again before I die.

Uhm, I should check my trig before making claims, but it feels like there is a pretty big moon diameter range between making a non-zero dark spot on the earth (size too small) and covering all of the corona effects (size too big). Now it casts a pretty thick full eclipse shadow, so it isn't well aligned to fit the sun — it hides part of the corona too, when you're at the center.

Actually, It doesn't exactly fits, it appears to fit from some perspectives.

Sun's size is so big comparable to both earth and moon. When shadow of moon is spread on earth, shadow's radius is much smaller than moon's radius, unlike our conventional knowledge that shadows appear larger with distance. For people on earth who are in the path of totality, it appears as if moon has completly covered the sun.

This is a true mind-blowing fact. The ratio of the distances between Earth-Sun and Earth-Moon is close to the ratio of the sizes between Sun & Moon. So the Moon & Sun look to be the same apparent size from the perspective of Earthlings... When I last read about this, we hadn't identified any other moons for which this holds true.

It turns out our moon has many seemingly strange properties. It's big but not very dense. Still a bit of a mystery how it formed, too. There are leading theories (ex. Mars-sized planet ramming into a young Earth) but not considered settled science just yet IIRC.

This is a funny thing about science. The ancients totally had an "explanation" of why the sun and the moon are the same size. Naturally, because the sun is highest form of yang energy, the moon must be the highest form of yin energy, etc. Modern science, OTOH, doesn't recognize this is a question to be explained. It's an example of how if your system doesn't have a place for something, you don't even notice the absence.

> There is no physical reason why the moon fits precisely within the diameter of the sun

This ought to fit nicely into some version of the anthropic principle. That either pensive critters like us specifically or life in more general terms for a variety of subtle reasons depend on just such a match of ratios.

Since the moon moves away from the earth, very slowly, in a bit over half a billion years we will have no more total eclipses.

If moon's size was larger than sun, then eclipses would be proper nights.

There were a lot of allusions to food. I assume the writer was hungry when they wrote the piece.