Alt text:
The most rare, top-tier eclipse photo would be the Solar Earth Eclipse, but the Apollo 12 crew's attempt to capture it was marred by camera shake. They said it looked spectacular, though.
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
635 points (99.2% liked)
xkcd
8636 readers
5 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Thanks. I could not for the life of me understand the last panel because I kept misreading it as "frustratingly looking up at the clouds..." and the bit that followed just didn't make sense lol.
Just got back from niagra and while it was still amazing to witness and we got glimpses of the totality for about 7 seconds, still disappointed I didn't get a better view. Xkcd connected with me so much as I literally started looking up weather, room rates, etc for Sydney in 2028 last night.
My original plans were to travel to Niagara Falls. That seemed like the coolest place there would be totality at.
I am so glad I (due to circumstances I neither thought nor hoped would happen) am typing this message from Mexico City Airport instead while waiting for boarding to start for my flight back to Europe. It was perfectly sunny where I watched it.
Glad you got a good view! Now that I've experienced it with limited view but a really cool darkness, I'm ready to prep for a trip I hope gives a much better view in a few years!
Australia for 2028? Why not Spain for 2026?
Spain isn't a real place.
Spain
Someone said: not impressive enough because too close to sunset. Didn't check.
That's why you do Iceland instead.
The 2026 one doesn't pass over much land or near many major population centres, and a lot of Europeans are going to try and see it, so it's going to be very difficult to go see it, especially if you're an American.
Yeah. Just avoid the plains and clouds shouldn't be a problem.
Not mostly, anyway.
Why not Texas for 2024?
Requires inventing time travel. More work.
Spain's is a partial eclipse. My question is why not Egypt 2027?
If we're talking about 12 August 2026, this says it'll be a total eclipse, in northern Spain at least.
You're right. I'm not sure why I thought it was a partial eclipse.
Apollo 12 had some pretty bad luck with cameras. They accidentally pointed the lunar surface video camera at the sun burning out the vidicon tube, and a camera mounted in a window fell and hit Al Bean in the head during splashdown.
The focus issues are actually over-exposure issues that then lead to focus issues.
He forgot the ones showing the weird light levels during totality
I went up to the Lake Champlain area where there was some high altitude cloud cover. Fortunately, it didn't affect the viewing basically at all. A cool side effect of the clouds/related atmospheric conditions though was that the sun had a 22° halo. I wish that 1) I'd had a camera that could capture it and that 2) I'd had the presence of mind to pay attention to what happened to it in the moments before and after totality.
I was watching, hoping to see the shadow on the ground. It was too fast to see but I did notice the sky going dark before totality and then lighting up before it ended.