In the Los Angeles-&-points-west area, we got a crescent sun. I was fretting not being able to observe the eclipse because we'd mislaid our eclipse glasses, but a fortuitous light cloud cover came up and we were able to observe without getting too dazzled -- with light cloud between sun and us, we could flap our spread fingers before our eyes and see the notch taken out of the sun's disc, sort of a zoetrope kind of effect. When a bit more cloud thickness blew in, we didn't have to play finger games. So, Fortuna favored us.
Eclipse glasses are marvelous stuff -- I think they allow about 1 photon in 100,000 to pass, and most of the photons they pass seem to be in yellow-orange, giving the sun (about the only thing you can see through that filter) a distinctive sepia-gold coloration. I hear we've got a really humungo sunspot going on with the big solar flare -- maybe it's naked-eye visible. I usually need some magnification to make sunspots out on the solar disc -- about 7 to 10x.
07-14-2002, 09:14 PM
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