• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    Man, it was a little disappointing.

    Mind you, here in the southern Appalachians, I didn’t expect anything highly dramatic, but I figured it might get dim outside. Nope, without the glasses and looking directly, I wouldn’t have known it was happening.

    • Skanky@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Yeah, i hate to say it, but unless you’re in the path of totality, it’s pretty lame. Sure, the light gets weird, and you can make neat little crescents with shadows, but that’s about it

      Being in totality is without a doubt, one of the most awe-inspiring things you could ever witness

      • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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        7 months ago

        Had a few people tell me how they are in the 90% path and didn’t see a reason for seeing totality.

        I tried explaining it to them in terms of sex: “I was 95% close to getting laid! Sure, that was probably fun, but you should really see totality.” Realized they just didn’t think it was worth it as an experience. Their loss.

        • jupiter_jazz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          Yeah I traveled to a city for 1 min of totality because I couldn’t afford a hotel to stay the night and had out from there. Totally worth, it’s one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen. Like a ring of absolute silver. It felt like night too because the crickets came out and started chirping.

          • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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            7 months ago

            What is neat is how you experience sunset from a 360 degree perspective rather than just the normal western arc.

      • TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        Had totality for 1 min 22 seconds. The entire time I was slack-jawed or going “Holy shit!” My kids were going bananas lol

      • fsxylo@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        I took a picture of the parking lot I was in and it looked normal, but actually looking at it felt like the sun was broken.

        People don’t talk about what the world looks like in the moments before total eclipse. Everything looks flat and desaturated. Kinda looks like a photo from the 90s but in HD.

    • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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      7 months ago

      I… Disagree. But I’m a space nerd anyways so the thought of 2 celestial bodies as far away as they are from each other to be such a perfect ratio that they basically perfectly overlap, to be just the neatest little cosmic joke on our improbable planet. It’s a fun quirk and being at all able to see it is neat.

      Also, I’m sorry but I was in northern Appalachian where for like half an hour it got slowly darker by just a little bit at a time and by the time it got mostly covered a perfect cloud coverage hit to make it viewable from the naked eye behind the clouds as a crescent for the next hour and it was very cool to see that sliver of crescent sun just hanging up there.

      It was neat for not being totality.

    • lemming@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      What percentage was the eclipse? It probably got dim, but human eyes are very good at filtering out wide range of intensity changes to handle both full sun and cloudy sky. You really only notice an eclipse maybe at 80-90 %. But it isn’t that special even at 99 %. On the other hand, total eclipse is absolutely incredible.

      • Another Catgirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        7 months ago

        at 99% I think you can see the clouds several km away turn dark from the shadow of the moon, might get a nice view of watching the shadow move along.

        • Classy@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          I managed to drive south for an hour and found a spot that reached 1.006 magnitude. It was really surreal

        • lemming@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          That sounds very interesting. The time I saw total eclipse, at 99 % I was to excited about totality and it was cloudy. But I think I remember seeing the shadow rushing over the landscape.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        I think it was 75% here? I’d have to look it up, but that’s about what it looked like.

        I tried taking a few pics, but I had taken the wrong bag, so that was a bust. My phone actually took the best shot, and it was washed out

        • lemming@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          For partial eclipses, very cool is watching the light underneath trees. The small holes between leaves work a bit like camera obscura, so they effectively project crescents of the sun on the ground.

    • bluewing@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Don’t feel bad. I 3D printed the NASA approved pinhole camera to see an 80% eclipse I never got to see.

      According to NOAA the chance of overcast has historically been 53% for the the 8th of April for where I live. I was on the the wrong side of the 53% chance.

      At my age, in 20 years I probably will be dead according to statistics.