Eclipse today

August 21, 2017 • 7:00 am

I asked reader Rick, who a while back had sent me links to eclipse viewing, to remind me yesterday so I could post them today. So, if you want to watch it either live or livestreamed, here’s where to go (links are all from Rick):

NASA has coverage: https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/eclipse-live-stream

Space.com has a page of info on live streams that will be available: https://www.space.com/37736-total-solar-eclipse-2017-live-streams.html

Here’s a link( time and date)  that gives the exact time parameters for any zipcode: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/@5132147

And, Fast Company provides an extensive compendium of link. Remember: DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN WITHOUT SPECIAL GLASSES; the one exception is during the two minutes or so of complete totality—if you’re lucky enough to be in that path.

• NASA will have not one, but two live streams of the eclipse: NASA TV, the space agency’s television service, will broadcast live footage compiled from terrestrial video feeds, “eclipse jets,” spacecraft, high-altitude balloons, specially modified telescopes, and from aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Stream the eclipse on your favorite platform, including YouTube, Periscope, Twitch, and Facebook Live.

The space organization will also broadcast a live stream from NASA EDGE, its unscripted live feed, and if lizard people emerge during the eclipse, you’re probably gonna want to be watching NASA’s unscripted feed.

• Twitter and the Weather Channel will live-stream the event. Coverage will include live shots from 10 locations in the eclipse’s “path of totality,” including Nashville, Casper, Wyoming; McMinnville, Oregon; and Hopkinsville, Kentucky, the point where totality is expected to stretch out the longest.

• Virtual Telescope Project will host a free online observing session with views of the total solar eclipse beginning at 1 p.m. EDT. Watch here.

• Time and Life VR will be producing a 360-degree VR livestream of the solar eclipse on Time‘s Facebook and YouTube pages, in partnership with Mesmerise Global.

The Ballooning Project will use its high-altitude balloons to stream videos of the eclipse. Watch here.

• Slooh, a space broadcaster, will cover the eclipse as it travels from sea to shining sea, broadcasting its view of the eclipse from a perch in Idaho, capping off a three-day long-eclipse fest. Watch here.

• Exploratorium, the San Francisco science museum, will have five live streams of the eclipse filmed in Madras, Oregon, and Casper, Wyoming. They’ll have Spanish- and English-narrated eclipse feeds and a special “sonification” of the eclipse by the Kronos Quartet. You can also watch on their app. Watch here.

• Science Channel will broadcast views from Madras, Oregon, in partnership with the Lowell Observatory, while retired astronaut Mike Massimino will host the proceedings from Charleston, South Carolina. Watch here.

• CNN and Volvo will provide a 360-degree view of the eclipse from various locations along the path of totality. The stream will also be viewable in virtual reality, in case reality is too much of a bummer. The livestream begins at 12:03 p.m. EDT. Watch here.

If you sleep through the entire thing, lay off the Ambien and tune in to NOVA’s Eclipse Over America,  which will premiere Monday night and recap the great eclipse.

 Here’s what totality will look like; this is from Australia in 2012:

Oh, and during the last eclipse I saw the birds went nuts, singing all over the place since they thought it was dawn. Pay attention to the animals you see during the eclipse, and add a comment if they do anything weird. If I’m lucky enough to have Honey come back (she has been gone for nearly two days), I’ll be watching it with her and observing her behavior.

28 thoughts on “Eclipse today”

  1. What I particularly remember when I watched the near total eclipse in London some years ago was how chilly it suddenly went. I wished I had brought a coat.

    1. I saw the same eclipse from a rest area on a French motorway. The gendarmes were carrying hand-lamps in case it got too dark!

  2. I recall as a kid in the Sixties seeing a partial eclipse from the banks of Lake Erie. I wonder if that was the same one the second-person anti-hero of Carly Simon’s song flew his Lear jet to see in totality up in Nova Scotia, with the wife of a good friend, wife of a good friend.

    Uh-oh, now there are clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee.

  3. Doesn’t matter how astronomical an event, it can always be hijacked for your cause:

    Concerns over human trafficking during total solar eclipse

    …Human trafficking is considered modern-day slavery. The Federal Bureau of Investigation says instances increase when there’s a big event with a lot of people, such as the total solar eclipse. NASA predicts hundred-of-thousands of people will come to the Local 6 area to see the big event.

    “There’s demand for this so they’re going to supply it because it is a money making thing,” says Smith. “Human trafficking is the second largest money maker in the world.”

    “It’s more befriending,” says Smith. “A lot of times recruiters can be children their own age, or a year or two older than them.”

    Smith says there’s no need to panic, you can still enjoy the eclipse with your family just pay attention to your surroundings and don’t let your children wander off.

    http://www.wpsdlocal6.com/story/35951765/concerns-over-human-trafficking-during-total-solar-eclipse

    1. Hey, sometimes great minds (like yours) and weak ones (like mine) think alike, too. 🙂

  5. Jesus Wept:

    American Blackout

    A tour of the solar eclipse’s path reveals a nation that fought to maintain a different sort of totality.

    .,,On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will arrive mid-morning on the coast of Oregon. The moon’s shadow will be about 70 miles wide, and it will race across the country faster than the speed of sound, exiting the eastern seaboard shortly before 3 p.m. local time. It has been dubbed the Great American Eclipse, and along most of its path, there live almost no black people.

    …At a moment of deep disagreement about the nation’s best path forward, here comes a giant round shadow, drawing a line either to cut the country in two or to unite it as one. Ancient peoples watched total eclipses with awe and often dread, seeing in the darkness omens of doom. The Great American Eclipse may or may not tell us anything about our future, but its peculiar path could remind us of something about our past—what it was we meant to be doing, and what we actually did along the way. And if it seems we need no reminding, consider this: We tend to backlight our history, and so run the risk of trying to recover a glory that never existed. When the light in August changes, watch carefully.

    …Oregon, where this begins, is almost entirely white. The 10 percent or so of state residents who do not identify as white are predominantly Latino, American Indian, Alaskan, or Asian. There are very few black Oregonians, and this is not an accident. The land that is now Oregon was not, of course, always inhabited by white people, but as a U.S. territory and then a state, Oregon sought to get and stay white. Among several formal efforts at racial exclusion was a provision in the original state constitution of 1857 that prohibited any “free Negro or Mulatto” from entering and residing in the state.

    The American West was not the land of chattel slavery—with some brief exceptions, slavery was illegal in Oregon before and after statehood. But among the dreams of the pioneers there was, at least sometimes, a dream of escaping racial strife by escaping black people altogether. As put by Peter Burnett, the architect of one racially exclusionary law in Oregon, the aim was simply to avoid “that most troublesome class of population. We are in a new world, under most favorable circumstances, and we wish to avoid most of those evils that have so afflicted the United States and other countries.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/american-totality-eclipse-race/537318/

  6. Jerry finds a mysterious plant that he says looks like a triffid.

    Then millions of Americans are going to stare up at an astronomical light-show.

    What could possibly go wrong?

  7. The film – Australia in 2012 – was exciting to watch. The background voices gives a sense of the fun.

  8. Last minute I decided to grab the kids and run up to Honea Path SC for the eclipse. We will have about 2:35 of totality here. Then I have to drive 9 hours back so the kids can be at school tomorrow morning.

    According to the locals some people in the area have rented their homes for as much as $10,000 for 2 days.

      2. An act of Mithras or Zeus, or the great Ju-Ju (sp.?) at the bottom of the sea.

        Read in the hard-copy NY Times today that a couple watching the eclipse “thanked God that they had skipped work.”

        How so? Did they receive a special revelation from God that it was ok to skip work(despite their presumed lack of prior proper planning)? That God would take care of any objection from their employers?

  10. You want us to comment on whether any living beings in America start acting strangely? Hmm. That’s quite a task you’ve set, separating signal from noise there

  11. Well, the cloud cover cleared away just before he eclipse started here in Southern California. Right on schedule.

    The next time some fundie blathers at me about how the bible predicts this or that, I’m going to laugh in their face, and refer them to science, which provides specific, accurate predictions.

    1. Then they’d say it was just a trick. A simulation put on by NASA, the CIA, and the Rockefellers.

  12. I plan on swimming in the pool during the eclipse, from beginning to end! I’ll be wearing my glasses to stare up at the complete eclipse, of course. Figured it would be a nice way to celebrate 🙂

  13. I see a broad foamy batch of clouds approaching Chicago. I hope it doesn’t spoil it for PCCE.

  14. I report hearing many birds…I could only pick out robins and blue jays. Also heard crickets. That surprised me for some reason.
    Going back outside now. I feel like I’m wearing very dark sunglasses.

    1. The birds may be baffled as they key in to reduced sunlight to decide when to start getting ready for bed. The whole noise phase is the evening chorus.

  15. Hey Jerry, I’m at the tip of the point at 55th Street and while it just feels like a cloudy day–more than half the sun is still visible and it is very cloudy for real–a big flock of purple martins just started swooping over the water, as if it was sunset. How can they tell it isn’t just cloudy??

  16. I have just got off the phone talking to my daughter Amelia(veterinarian) who is camping near Stanley Lake, Idaho, in the path of totality. She reports that the scene was fantastic. She said the first thing she notice is the temperature began to drop significantly a half hour before totality. When it began to get very dark, the dogs decided it was time to hunt so they started circling in the woods. A friend’s huskies, which are trained as sled dogs, started to howl. Amelia said it was “very creepy”. The few birds around went silent as if roosting. No insect sounds were heard at totality. temperature a their location(4,000 feet elevation) went from 80F to about 55F and is slowly recovering as the process continutes.

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