In a way, the real exciting part came afterwards. As I left the library I could sense that the sky was darker than it would otherwise be on a clear April day. And amid this ambient darkness there were little crowds of people with their special glasses. How often do you see so many people excited for something nowadays?
Monday, April 8, 2024
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I stopped by the library earlier today because, as it turns out, they had some eclipse viewing going on. Basically in back there was a librarian sitting on a blanket and loaning out eclipse glasses. They'd apparently been giving them away before but ran out and kept enough on hand for patrons to borrow and give back. Anyway, it was interesting. I did get a good look at what the sun was doing. Of course if glasses are thickly coated enough so that you can safely look at the sun, even during an eclipse, that means you can't see anything else through them. Don't use these while crossing the street, in other words.
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2 comments:
Not having realized Providence would be in the direct path of the eclipse it was nice to know you'd got to experience it yourself - 91% isn't bad at all. What a cool thing for the libraries there to give away free safety glasses so people could experience such a rare event. You're right that it's an almost equally rare event to see so many people gathered to experience the majesty of one of nature's prime shows.
Iain Banks wrote about eclipses saying the unique occurrence might attract alien tourists to experience the extraordinary phenomenon firsthand (or tentacle). He first talked about the incredible coincidence of Earth's moon perfectly fitting over the sun during eclipses; if it was smaller or further away you'd only ever see partial eclipses and if it were bigger or closer the moon would hide the sun completely so there's be no halo of light. It could be an event that happens on Earth and nowhere else.
Tourists from around the world arrived to watch the event so why not some visitors from much further away? View from the Mother Ship..
Interesting title.
Yes, I know I was rather lucky to be in the eclipse's path. It's the kind of thing that some jump on planes and fly to foreign countries to see. Which is probably a little overboard, but it does make you curious. I didn't mind not being in time for them to give me a pair of the glasses outright since there aren't too many occasions to wear them. (Maybe they could make daytime napping easier.) Technology, policy, and miscellaneous stuff has made much of the population unwilling to pay attention to anything outside of themselves, so it was nice to see an exception.
Interesting point from Banks about how this might be something that happens only on Earth. Is a certain ratio of moon to planet and distance between the two a condition of having higher life on the planet? We of course haven't found any other populated planets, although it seems right that life would be out there, somewhere. Of course other planets and star systems are far away. As far as we know, our world is unique. It would be quite wondrous anyway.
Interesting view from orbit. Things do certainly keep moving.
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