this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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Yeah, but most of those are boring-ass lunar eclipses. The cool one, the solar eclipse, is much rarer.
Even a full solar eclipse happens every 2 years or so.
Total solar eclipses in any given area only happen about once in 300 years I think? (I'm too lazy to go look up the exact math). So unless you are willing to travel the 150 year number isn't that wrong.
It's more frequent than that. It's a cycle that repeats on a very regular basis.
The current eclipse is part of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Saros_139
Doesn't that say it changes slightly each year, so if you're on the edge one time you may never see that cycle again and will need to wait until a different full eclipse reaches you?
This was a super cool link. Thanks for sharing!
Ok, but it is possible to travel.
And it's also entirely possible to travel, paying a premium for accommodations and flights, to an otherwise dull, small town in Texas, and it's cloudy that day, so you've spent thousands of dollars, planning an entire vacation to an uninteresting destination for virtually nothing.
So when one passes by your doorstep, it's worth taking time our of your day to appreciate it, if possible.
Was it cloudy today?
In some places, yes. In others, no. My point was that it's an unpredictable risk (and still worthwhile for many people) to travel for an eclipse, and its much more convenient and lower risk to visit when it passes by where you live.
What exactly is your point?
if you have money and free time, then yes
Problem is most of them are over water
Boats exist
Ah yes, surely people are willing to go to the middle of massive oceans on a boat to see the eclipse :P
If they care enough, they will.
"It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10?"
If you have a space ship, you don't even have to wait for them to hit Earth. There's constantly total eclipses from each of the planets and moons. I'm very curious what a total eclipse from a body with an atmosphere would look like.
What do you mean? Isn't Earth a body with an atmosphere? Also, I get your point, but boats are a lot more accessible than spacecraft.
I mean where the eclisping body has an atmosphere. The moon is a solid body with hard edges. It can give total eclipses, annular eclipses (where the entire moon is surrounded by the sun but it doesn't block the whole thing because it's farther from the Earth), and partial eclipses (where they overlap but aren't entirely on top of each other).
Earth would make a different kind of shadow where there would be other variations depending on whether the planet itself and/or the atmosphere are fully or partially covering the sun.
And then there's Jupiter, where the atmosphere is much larger than the rocky core and the pressure is high enough that it's not very well defined where the atmosphere transitions from gas to liquid to solid, which would probably give a different effect for eclipses. Though that depends on how opaque or transparent it is, also the sun's apparent size would be smaller, so it might be kinda underwhelming.
It's still not really that cool tbh.