APOD: How a Total Solar Eclipse Ended (2024 Apr 14)

[APOD Robot]

How a Total Solar Eclipse Ended

Explanation: How does a total solar eclipse end? Yes, the Moon moves out from fully blocking the Sun, but in the first few seconds of transition, interesting things appear. The first is called a diamond ring. Light might stream between mountains or through relative lowlands around the Moon's edge, as seen from your location, making this sudden first light, when combined with the corona that surrounds the Moon, look like a diamond ring. Within seconds other light streams appear that are called, collectively, Bailey's beads. In the featured video, it may seem that the pink triangular prominence on the Sun is somehow related to where the Sun begins to reappear, but it is not. Observers from other locations saw Bailey's beads emerge from different places around the Moon, away from the iconic triangular solar prominence visible to all. The video was captured with specialized equipment from New Boston, Texas, USA on April 8, 2024.

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[wilddouglascounty]

Once again, the digital sensors just plain maxed out as the sun re-emerged, while in person, the reappearance of the bright disk of the sun, while causing a person to avert their eyes from the brightness, was accompanied by a spotlight shaft of light shooting down from the sky into the circle of darkness caused by the totality shadow. It was stunning way beyond awesome and the only way to experience its full impact is in person. Our complex human visual sensory system captures it way better than even this video of the beautiful transition from totality to partial eclipse.

[Chris Peterson]

Once again, the digital sensors just plain maxed out as the sun re-emerged, while in person, the reappearance of the bright disk of the sun, while causing a person to avert their eyes from the brightness, was accompanied by a spotlight shaft of light shooting down from the sky into the circle of darkness caused by the totality shadow. It was stunning way beyond awesome and the only way to experience its full impact is in person. Our complex human visual sensory system captures it way better than even this video of the beautiful transition from totality to partial eclipse.

Once again, our visual system is pathetically inferior to modern electronic imaging systems. You are confusing the objective data and the subjective experience.

No image can capture the experience of an eclipse. No human eye can come close to matching a good camera for the objective recording of it, however.

[wilddouglascounty]

And before anyone extolls the virtue of how digital data collection can cover a greater degree of the spectrum, have greater visual resolution and can break time into way smaller chunks that the human brain is capable, that is all completely missing the point. The digital breakdown is in the simultaneity and complexity of putting all those pieces together. Sure digitization spreads it out much more finely for a permanent recording of the data, and in greater detail that can be looked at over and over again. But combining the data, processing it into an experiential whole in the present is what the brain does, and the collective processing and presentation of the brain is way more complex: like comparing a tricycle to a Lamborghini. We have spent an incredible amount of science time trying to unravel those pathways and processing "algorithms" used in the brain and are still only scratching the surface of the pathways, let along the complexities of processing that occurs in those pathways. For a hint of what we know, I recommend checking out the article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6888039/

Why do we have such a biological prioritization of visual data processing? Over time, our lives have depended on being able to quickly process visual information deeply, in a nuanced way, in all kinds of conditions, in order to thrive or even survive. I find it fascinating that dolphins and whales have been observed surfacing, watching the eclipse, then returning beneath the surface afterwards https://www.latimes.com/science/science ... story.html . Apparently their complex visual processing centers are as delighted as ours over experiencing an eclipse!

[johnnydeep]

How does a total solar eclipse end?

"This is the way a total eclipse ends
Not with a whimper, but a FLASH-bang!"
—— (with apologies to T. S. Eliot)

From The Hollow Men" (T. S. Eliot - 1925)

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

[grizzly_sm]

I had seen several partials but never a total eclipse. I brought cameras along but after about 20 seconds I decided that I wasn't going to live this experience through the lens. There are countless other photographers more able than I to document this. I needed to see this in person and more important - feel it. What an experience.

[Chris Peterson]

I had seen several partials but never a total eclipse. I brought cameras along but after about 20 seconds I decided that I wasn't going to live this experience through the lens. There are countless other photographers more able than I to document this. I needed to see this in person and more important - feel it. What an experience.

It is an experience that is difficult to communicate to anyone who hasn't experienced it.

[johnnydeep]

I had seen several partials but never a total eclipse. I brought cameras along but after about 20 seconds I decided that I wasn't going to live this experience through the lens. There are countless other photographers more able than I to document this. I needed to see this in person and more important - feel it. What an experience.

It is an experience that is difficult to communicate to anyone who hasn't experienced it.

Which would include me! I just can't imagine being that moved, or even impressed by it. I've never seen one "live".

[grizzly_sm]

I had seen several partials but never a total eclipse. I brought cameras along but after about 20 seconds I decided that I wasn't going to live this experience through the lens. There are countless other photographers more able than I to document this. I needed to see this in person and more important - feel it. What an experience.

It is an experience that is difficult to communicate to anyone who hasn't experienced it.

I think it's akin to seeing photographs of the Grand Canyon and being there. The pictures are nice, the anecdotal accounts are impressive, but man oh man you don't get the immensity until you've been there.

[Guest]

I had seen several partials but never a total eclipse. I brought cameras along but after about 20 seconds I decided that I wasn't going to live this experience through the lens. There are countless other photographers more able than I to document this. I needed to see this in person and more important - feel it. What an experience.

It is an experience that is difficult to communicate to anyone who hasn't experienced it.

I think it's akin to seeing photographs of the Grand Canyon and being there. The pictures are nice, the anecdotal accounts are impressive, but man oh man you don't get the immensity until you've been there.

[johnnydeep]

I had seen several partials but never a total eclipse. I brought cameras along but after about 20 seconds I decided that I wasn't going to live this experience through the lens. There are countless other photographers more able than I to document this. I needed to see this in person and more important - feel it. What an experience.

It is an experience that is difficult to communicate to anyone who hasn't experienced it.

I think it's akin to seeing photographs of the Grand Canyon and being there. The pictures are nice, the anecdotal accounts are impressive, but man oh man you don't get the immensity until you've been there.

But the Grand Canyon is HUGE! Compared to a 0.5* wide Sun-Moon combo in the sky, I still can't imagine it being that impressive.

[Chris Peterson]

It is an experience that is difficult to communicate to anyone who hasn't experienced it.

I think it's akin to seeing photographs of the Grand Canyon and being there. The pictures are nice, the anecdotal accounts are impressive, but man oh man you don't get the immensity until you've been there.

But the Grand Canyon is HUGE! Compared to a 0.5* wide Sun-Moon combo in the sky, I still can't imagine it being that impressive.

Well, as you know, the Moon presents an illusion of being much larger, or of covering more sky than it does. And indeed, when you look up at the coronal ring it seems quite large. But it's more than just that. It's the weird light before and after, the instant turning off of the lights, without apparent transition, when totality begins, the oddness of birds and insects, and the peculiar all-around sunset. It's the whole package.

[johnnydeep]

I think it's akin to seeing photographs of the Grand Canyon and being there. The pictures are nice, the anecdotal accounts are impressive, but man oh man you don't get the immensity until you've been there.

But the Grand Canyon is HUGE! Compared to a 0.5* wide Sun-Moon combo in the sky, I still can't imagine it being that impressive.

Well, as you know, the Moon presents an illusion of being much larger, or of covering more sky than it does. And indeed, when you look up at the coronal ring it seems quite large. But it's more than just that. It's the weird light before and after, the instant turning off of the lights, without apparent transition, when totality begins, the oddness of birds and insects, and the peculiar all-around sunset. It's the whole package.

Ok. I guess you just have to be there as the saying goes. Too bad I'll almost certainly never see one IRL.