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once in a lifetime
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Why did nobody give a fuck about the 2023 eclipse?
2023 was an annular eclipse not a total eclipse. Very different experiences for the viewer.
https://www.space.com/difference-between-total-solar-eclipse-and-annular-solar-eclipse
The annular one over north America? Because it was annular. While a cool event it is really a specific kind of partial eclipse. Totality is incomparable to even a 99% partial eclipse. I heard it described as the difference between mostly dead VS dead and recently I've seen the xkcd comic that does a decent job conveying the difference too.
https://xkcd.com/2914
I didn't get it... What is 91% speciality
If you didn't know, you'd expect a 91% eclipse to almost look like a full eclipse. (I think his idea was you got close enough that it was over 90%.) But the sun is so bright that it still looks like day at 91%. You might not even realize there is an eclipse unless you looked at it with glasses.
When I saw it two days ago, even at 99% everything still looked normal. It was only a tiny bit darker outside. You still needed to use glasses to see that an eclipse was happening.
When it hit 100% it was like lights being turned out in a room. In place of the sun was a giant black disk with a multicolored glow around it and a bright red spot (solar flare was happening at the time).
Thank you
It's like hearing vs. seeing fireworks
2017 had a total solar eclipse in the US in the southeast. People did care about it, but it wasn't as big of a deal as this one I don't think. I think part of the reason is people were made aware of how awesome (literal meaning) the event is in 2017 and this was almost perfectly centered across the US so accessible to almost everyone if they really want to.