In case you hadn’t already heard, we got a pretty swell eclipse this weekend. Folks lucky enough to live in the path of the eclipse (in our area that meant southern Oregon/northern California) got to see the “ring of fire.” Up here in the “mid-Willamette” we only got your normal sort of “dented sun,” but it was still pretty exciting.
It was about 6:25 after a rigorous 5 mile hike in the McDonald Forest and i suddenly remembered: eclipse! We dashed outside to see it, but alas: it was cloudy. And alas #2: we did not have protective eyewear and were not about to make a pin hole eclipse viewer thing real quick. SO, we improvised. I think i may have just started a new trend:
In all seriousness: don’t stare at the sun, even if it’s mostly covered by a moon. It’ll burn your retinas. We quite enjoyed the “eeriness” of the darkened sky, even if we couldn’t see any major eclipsey action. The sun looked normal through squinted eyes, but we could see the dent moving across its face through our ‘protective eyewear,’ even with the clouds. I’m a little jealous of my mom and her picnic on the mountainside, but at least we didn’t totally miss it! For more about our recent “annular” eclipse you can check out these websites:
- Nasa– view the pathway of the eclipse along with some other neat info
- Boston.com– some really amazing photographs of the eclipse around the world
- MrEclipse.com – info on eclipses in general
Were you lucky enough to view Sunday’s eclipse?
