Why the Total Eclipse
above? I took this photo about 25km north of Bucharest on 11th August 1999,
where we got a good viewing.
See more - shame about Cornwall....
Sometimes during an eclipse, the moon is too far away to
cover the Sun's disc completely. Such an occasion was the
Annular Eclipse of 3rd October 2005,
which I witnessed during a cycling holiday in Spain.
WARNING In 2013, I was diagnosed with possible sun damage to my
right eye - despite wearing the recommended glasses whilst viewing these
eclipses. This seems strange owing to the passing of over 13 years,
but it does look like such damage takes time to become apparent.
In my case, a developing cataract highlighted it.
Total lunar eclipses, though not so spectacular,
occur more frequently and can be seen from anywhere that the moon is visible.
Often, light is refracted by the earth's atmosphere to create a 'blood moon'.
This is due to red light being refracted more than other colours, as in a prism.
There was a good one the night of 3rd - 4th March 2007
- see here.
Further on matters astronomical, check out
Celestia - a
fantastic solar system (and further afield) simulator that runs under
Windows. The best part is that it's free!! You'll need a
good graphics card, but otherwise it works reasonably well on an 800MHz
machine. If you get into using its script files to re-run eclipses, etc,
you will need a Julian Date
calculator. My version, which was cribbed from the US Navy's site, also
works in timezones east of London(?!?) - see more.
I bought an old Stylophone in 2017 -
look what I found inside...
Want an accurate clock?
Click here for an explanation of why the US government's
official clock doesn't necessarily display the correct time for your local timezone.
Also included is a link to a very useful site that can display an accurate clock
within an IFRAME on your own website.
Have a look here for other utilities I have amassed..
