Eclipse
1999
Well it has come and gone. It sure brought out the "fringe elements", druids, Gaia/naturists, and doomsayers. People got married, and gave birth during it, and a fine quality London newspaper (The Sun) even blamed a knife murderer going crazy on the eclipse.
The main claim-to-fame of this solar eclipse was the fact that it happened over a largely populated zone. Solar eclipses occur when the moon gets in-between the Sun and the Earth, casting its shadow over us. As the suns corona extends much further out past its surface, and the distances and dimensions involved, this all rises to giving an unusual light show. Effects from this almost total blocking of the sun's light influences earth-based solar dependant systems, like temp. changes, animal behaviour and atmospheric affects.
It looked good on TV, but was a little disappointing in real life. We had a wonderful cloudless morning, and here in London we were expecting about 97% of totality. Just before 11:00am it suddenly clouded over, and although it got cool and dim, the animals didn't do anything strange apart from going quieter than normal. One of the neighbours cats was completely unaffected, and seemed pissed off we were ignoring it, when plainly it needed a good stroke. The dimness grew to its greatest at about 11:15, and returned to normal about 15mins later. The general experience was not too dissimilar from pre-dusk, it just happened a lot quicker than normal. I hadn't managed to get a filter in time, and even at 97% of totality it was far too bright to even consider looking at the sun directly.
The grandeur cannot be denied however, and this is an amazing astronomical event. It's just a pity about the hype, and the fact that the government couldn't enforce quality eclipse-viewers, and therefore issued statements that no-one should watch it directly. There were still many cases of people damaging their eyesight, seven quite seriously in the UK.
I guess I should have done the real thing, and like Dan headed off to Turkey, or somewhere, to really get a buzz. Maybe next time...
