UKC

Anyone watching live streaming?

In reply to FesteringSore:

what eclipse?

In reply to FesteringSore:

Or just look out the window.

In reply to mark s:

http://tinyurl.com/4m8avq7

In reply to FesteringSore:

There's a big blue hole over the vale of York so I've made myself a pinhole viewer.
jk

In reply to jkarran:

Cloudy in Aberdeen so no eclipse here - but they're running to the windows every so often to see if its cleared.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11483302/Solar-eclipse-2015-w...

In reply to FesteringSore:

Good views of it in Manchester, through thin cloud so didn't burn my eyes out.

In reply to RyanOsborne:

Got a glimpse of it in North Lincs through hazy cloud.

In reply to FesteringSore:

I just got this shot, straight out of the camera with no filter or editing
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisfox/16870075772/

In reply to RyanOsborne:

Same here in Sheffield, no need for anti-Day of the Triffid goggles - so much cloud you could barely see it anyway!!

Still, very impressive.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Seen it on Anglesey

Northern Lights earlier this week on Anglesey as well

In reply to FesteringSore:

Too cloudy here (south coast) but it definitely got darker.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Great view of it in south Devon, layer of high cloud acted as a good 'viewer'. Got pretty dark and cold as well.

In reply to FesteringSore:


Mo , I kooked sirecrly at it/

Cant beloeve my eyed

In reply to chris fox:

Nice shot

In reply to FesteringSore:

Good views in East Lothian - was watching with a pinhole camera while waiting for the physio to tell me that the hill bashing days are as good as over. Well I may have something to say about that!

Strange light when down to a thin crescent.

Watching a live stream from Longyearbyen in Svalbard. Looks clear.
http://direkte.vg.no/studio/nyhetsdoegnet/#!videoId=109874

In reply to cander:

Indeed it cleared - very good view - someone brought a piece of welding glass in - very clear view of the eclipse - very chuffed to have seen it.

In reply to RyanOsborne:

Likewise here in Shipley

In reply to FesteringSore:

Great in Cornwall.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Just viewed it here in Derbyshire.
Had just set up several telescopes and binoculars to project it but at about 9:10 it clouded over .
Viewed the rest through blue magnesium filters and by the naked eye .

Impressive .

OM

In reply to FesteringSore:

I saw through some thin clouds and a welding mask. It's a pretty cool event.

Really made me stop and think, their must be a God for something so incredible like this, to happen. It's too perfect to be co-incidental.

In reply to FesteringSore:

My snaps:
https://twitter.com/oot_naboot/status/578868876219408384

Annoyed the second one didn't quite work out.

In reply to cap'nChino:

Almost everybody says the Sun is 'about 400' times further away from the earth as the Moon, and 'about 400' times the diameter, but it's very hard to find the exact figures i.e. exactly how coincidental the figures are. Does anyone know? I think the Sun is about 402 times the diameter of the moon. But no amount of Googling has supplied an answer.

I'm also intrigued how many people say it's 'just' a coincidence, as if by saying 'just' it takes away the peculiarity of the coincidence.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
I just Googled "sun moon diameter" and this was the second link in the list

http://www.universetoday.com/26987/earth-sun-and-moon/

The numbers are 389 and 403.

In reply to Simon Caldwell:

Thanks. I think i used too many words in my Googling

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Less is more

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


What's peculiar about it?
jk

In reply to jkarran:



Its probably quite rare for planets to have the right size moon, the right distance from the local star etc. (and be habitable perhaps?)

I've read a very entertaining SF short story based on this premise which suggested that if you wanted to find aliens visiting earth, you should chase eclipses, and look around at totality to see if any one looks a bit odd. - i.e the author felt that eclipses where the only thing noteworthy about earth.

In reply to cap'nChino:


I looked on the internet and found the eclipses for the next 4000 years.
Is the internet GOD?

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcatmax/SEcatmax.html

In reply to Dr.S at work:

Transitions? Good book.

Now I'm sad again that Iain Banks is dead.

In reply to cap'nChino:

Is all the other stuff that doesn't line up evidence for no god then?

In reply to cap'nChino:


Firstly it aint perfect (see other discussions).

Secondly it aint incredible - it's celestial engineering and maths. They happen frequently.

Thirdly, why does something spectacular have to be evidence of a God?


The simple fact that we can accurately predict eclipses far into the future tells me that this is NOT divine.

In reply to Rampikino:

The conditions surrounding these events can only be created by some other force. There is no way gravity is capable of holding these massive celestial bodies in place, gravity can't even hold aircraft down how on earth would it hold the moon and sun in place. Some things science can't explain.

In reply to Rampikino:

I don't think you have any data on that. We know for sure it doesn't happen anywhere else in this solar system. What I've read suggests that rocky planets having moons as relatively large as ours is pretty unusual. Iain Banks thought it was extremely unusual that the disc of a large moon or binary planet would be just the right size to display the chromosphere of the nearest star, and he would know as much about it as anyone else!

Not that this is relevant to a god argument, one way or the other. It's more about the likelihood of Earth being a popular tourist destination among the more affluent and technically competent inhabitants of the galaxy.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


Very often when you see patterns or alignments in nature it is because there is a cryptic connection between two phenomena that will become obvious when you know the physical or mathematical rules that join them. I think that in this case, 'just a coincidence' is intended to stress that there is not a neat explanation of why the angular dimensions line up so well. In one sense this makes the coincidence more impressive, in another, less so.

In reply to cap'nChino:

Is a helicopter and a treadmill involved in an eclipse?

In reply to Dave Garnett:

I will qualify this by adding that they happen frequently on earth.

In reply to Rampikino:


God does work in mysterious ways.

In reply to cap'nChino:

God has been unemployed and sitting on the sofa scratching his balls and letting the universe go to rat shit for a long time.

Now if God was a woman things would be very different.

In reply to cap'nChino:

Im sure the likes of Newton and Einstein may have something to say about this. The fact tyhat with some relativley simple equations allows us intelligent monkeys to predict teh exact time, location and shape of the shadow surely argues teh exact opposite.

It is agreed that our understanding is not perfect, whuch is why the search is on for dark matter, but Newtonian gravitation with a few tweaks by Einstein works well for most situations.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

Watch stargazing live, they had an image from one of teh US rovers (Curiosity I think) of a Martian eclipse of the sun by Phobos.

In reply to kipper12:



Your just trolling me now.

In reply to cap'nChino:

I think it's the other way around.

In reply to kipper12:

http://www.space.com/22685-mars-solar-eclipse-curiosity-rover-videos.html

I think you mean this one

In reply to FesteringSore:

I thought it was a bit dull.

In reply to Dave Garnett:


How many exoplannets were even known when he made this assertion?

There's a lot of stuff out there, that we see seemingly unusual 'coincidences' in some of it is to be expected and it says more about our minds than anything else.

jk

In reply to Rampikino:





It's close enough to allow us to see the sun's corona, and valleys on the surface of the moon.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baily%27s_beads

And it's not just the alignment in size- as the moon is receding there is only a relatively short period of the earths history when totality as we observe it is possible- the last one will be in 600 million years- not exactly a blink of the eye, but given it took 4.5 billion years for us to evolve, if life had been a little bit slower getting going we'd have missed them.

Now this is by no means proof it was engineered. But if there *was* a god, and he/she wanted to leave a clue as to their existence, without some sort of obvious manifestation, then this would be a way of doing it...

Do I believe that's what really happened? Not really. But without invoking the anthropic principle, the odds against us being able to witness eclipses as we do are quite literally astronomical...

Cheers
Gregor

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:



Personally if I was a deity I would be working harder at leaving clues if the ones I was leaving just weren't working and my people were busy slaughtering each other in large numbers over religion.

I've heard a similar theory about crop circles and aliens - that aliens leave crop circles as clues to their existence. Yeah right. I've made my way light years across the universe just to piss off a farmer.

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

Not really, it happens on literally every single inhabited planet we know of. Them's pretty good odds.

In reply to Sir Chasm:

Quite. That's the anthropic principle. ..

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

What!? That we wouldn't see eclipses if we weren't here?

In reply to Dave Garnett:

>What I've read suggests that rocky planets having moons as relatively large as ours is pretty unusual.

The fact that we have a moon large enough to stabilise our axis of rotation is one of the reasons that our evolution was possible. So whilst it is unusual for a small rocky planet to have a significant moon, it might not be so unusual for such planets to have the stable conditions needed for complex life to evolve (provided they are in a habitable zone).

The size and distance ratio however is a lucky co-incidence (*or is it) which those of a religious persuasion might attribute to a god. Also, as someone said, the moon used to be much closer and is still getting further away.

*Thinking about this a bit more and in relation to some of the conditions required for complex life to evolve, it might not be such a coincidence. Evolution of complex life needs:

A star which burns consistently in a stable way for billions of years to allow enough time for evolution to happen. (e.g. an average sized main sequence star like our sun)
A planet with a stable orbit around a star at the correct distance for a solvent (e.g. water) to be mostly liquid.
The planet needs to be the right size - big enough to still have a molten core after billions of years to generate a magnetic field which keeps that nasty solar wind at bay - not so big that gravity prevents organisms from moving or growing.
The planet needs to have a stable climate so that mass extinctions are rare to give complex life a chance. A moon of the correct size is very helpful in stabilising the axis of rotation (and therefore seasonal climate), but if it was too small it wouldn't keep us stable and if it was too big, a change of the tide would be catastrophic.

Throw in all those variables and the chances of there being a planet inhabited by complex organisms with a moon of about the right size to display the nearest star's chromosphere might not be that small. I'm just musing of course - I don't really believe in co-incidences, but I don't believe in god either.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: > "I'm also intrigued how many people say it's 'just' a coincidence, as if by saying 'just' it takes away the peculiarity of the coincidence." <

It's like water having just about the only frozen phase in chemistry that floats on its own liquid. It just does. Forget polar ice caps and Gaia and all that stuff, vodka & orange wouldn't be the same without it.

Tried for some word play with my eclipse photo ... https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7633/16871485362_d152d3b313_k.jpg

In reply to Rampikino:

Intelligent aliens or intergalactic chavs?

In reply to Sir Chasm:


Yup.

Or...

The presence of a satellite of a size big enough to generate 'prefect' eclipses is a necessary prerequisite for the evolution of life (for reasons to do with tidal forces, and the environmental niches they create), and life evolves on a timescale that will generate intelligent beings at the right time to see the eclipses.

So, all planets where intelligent life exists do witness eclipses, though they may be very rare and possibly total one.

Cheers
Gregor

In reply to Chris Harris:

I agree. The physics etc behind it might be pretty interesting and special to some but as a spectator sport it did nothing for me!

In reply to Rampikino:



Yes, this would have to be a very 'hands off' god/gods, whatever that may mean.

And the eclipse would be more a 'signature', like on a work of art, than a clue

Re aliens and crop circles winding up farmers, maybe they are the work of wowbagger the infinitely prolonged...?

In reply to Sir Chasm:

Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if there is no one there to hear it?

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

Oh go on then, I'll agree. Only weakly mind, definitely not strongly.

In reply to chris fox:



That's great shot, better than mine which has no cloud because there's nothing to frame it.

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

Here is a reasonable article at explaining the timescales of us being able to see totality for those who want to read.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/2012/05/18/the-solar-ecl...

In reply to winhill:

the cloud cover was great for naked eye viewing near durham
straight out of the camera (and into picassa for a saturation boost
http://www.flickr.com/photos/131269847@N04/16684674308/

no wonder the ancients were into gods..

In reply to FesteringSore: The clouds cleared just enough, just in time over Midsomer Norton.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/8411024@N08/16248931864/

T.

In reply to jkarran:



it has to be this way because you are here to rationalise it into a mundane coincidence
do you ever experience wonder and awe?

In reply to moffatross:



Is it? I don't think so. Surely there's a perfectly fathomable scientific explanation (i.e. the molecular make-up of water) for it to behave the way it does. Whereas there's no possible (scientific) explanation for the moon and the sun's angular dimensions when viewed from earth being almost identical, apart from pure coincidence. I accept that there are lots of incidences in nature where 'useful shit happens', but it's not a scientific explanation. The science kicks in at the next level surely?

In reply to moffatross:

>Forget polar ice caps and Gaia and all that stuff, vodka & orange wouldn't be the same without it.

I'm sure the passengers in the saloon bar of the Titanic would have been quite happy for the properties of water to have been a bit different, even if it did mean inferior vodka and orange.

In reply to malk:

Shit hot. Nice one.

In reply to Simon Caldwell:



Hold on, if the ratios were exact wouldn't that be just too great a coincidence to be random. And thus, like the Babel Fish, proves and therefore instantly disproves the existence of God.

And therefore does the fact that the ratios aren't exact proves that God does exist. Or not.

Next question, is the Moon really a moon ?

http://io9.com/is-the-moon-a-planet-1064356920

In reply to Pursued by a bear:

nice but needs some colours
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131269847@N04/16250114594/

In reply to malk:


Frequently. The wonder part triggers a desire to understand better. Understanding better rarely diminishes the awe.
jk

In reply to Chris the Tall:

What's so teasingly wonderful is that the numbers are not exactly the same, so it doesn't prove the existence of any supernatural cause whatever. But it is a bit as if nature is teasing us to think otherwise.

In reply to malk: I did try opening it in Photoshop Elephants to see what it would do, but it didn't look like what I'd seen; dramatic contrast, but not real.

Yours looks psychedelic, man...

T.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Great thing about the human mind is its ability to spot the few coincidences that do happen from the overwhelming number that don't. And then to attribute all sorts of meaning to them.

In reply to GrahamD:

It's not so difficult to spot an eclipse, though, when it happens, is it?

In reply to Chris the Tall:

it was a planet?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theia_%28planet%29

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Even if they were the same (to how many decimal places and at which point in their respective elliptical orbits?) it wouldn't prove (or disprove) a supernatural cause. We'd most likely just be the lucky generation observing that particular phase of the earth-moon-sun's changing relationship.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

Sure. But the level of luck remains interesting, won't go away.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


If the relationship were different we'd still find something 'lucky' or 'wonderful' to see in it, it's what we're hardwired to do.

jk

In reply to FesteringSore:

Tried to watch it with my Class this morning but the cloud ruined that idea so we decided to try live streaming it but the Internet was slower than a 56k Dial up and had to put up with jerky half sentences and frozen screens. I hate technology sometimes!

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

It was here. It was cloudy all morning.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Suddenly getting very dark in Sheffield - is this another eclipse ?

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Statistically, they often coincide with a new moon, so I don't see why not.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I think everyone is taking this a bit too seriously! I'm sure Iain Banks' tongue was firmly in his cheek (that bit of Transition is light relief after all the heavy stuff about institutionalised torture).

All he was really saying, I think, was that for centuries mankind has been variously wrongly convinced that we are unique /in God's image / the only intelligent life and that the earth is at the centre of the solar system / galaxy / universe etc. What if there was one rather unusual and noteworthy thing about us, but that it was as trivial as hosting some rather impressive eclipses - and that this was only thing worth visiting for?

In reply to higherclimbingwales:


Having already gone over the maths (ratio of diameters/distances etc) I took my class out to watch it. There was just the right amount of cloud coming and going to watch it safely through the cloud. It was fantastic (I especially loved the very unusual blue of the sky). A real experience of their lives (so far). We then went back inside in time to watch the live streaming of totality from Svalbard. My next class then arrived, genuinely upset that their teacher had drawn the blinds and made them watch some pointless video the whole lesson - they couldn't even remember what it was about! Some people really are dullards beyond belief...........a chance to see something communally, live, rare and truly awesome and they get plonked in front of a screen like so much of the rest of their lives. I am really quite angry.

In reply to Robert Durran:


That is very sad. I only tried to stream it because there was too much cloud to even see the sun but even that was futile!

In reply to FesteringSore:

Solar eclipse: schoolchildren banned from watching on 'religious and cultural' grounds

A London primary school was criticised for banning children from watching the eclipse for “religious and cultural reasons.”

Pupils at North Primary School in Southall were stopped from watching the solar eclipse directly and had to observe it on screens instead.

Sometimes known as Little India, Southall is a diverse community in west London with a large Hindi population.

Although headteacher Ivor Johnstone would not comment on what the ‘religious and cultural’ reasons were, some Hindu scriptures say that an eclipse makes believers impure.
And fundamentalists believe that they need to bathe immediately after an eclipse and chant the name of God to overcome the forces of darkness.

However parents said children were disappointed by the decision, arguing that religious superstition had been allowed to overshadow science.

Phil Belman, whose seven year old daughter goes to the school, told The Evening Standard: “I am extremely upset about it.

In reply to Robert Durran:

My daughter's in primary 3; her class had just been going to use pinhole cameras (better than screens, anyway!)

However, I sent her in with a pair of eclipse glasses, and it seems they were shared round the entire class, with everyone getting several turns. Glad I bought them now!

In reply to FesteringSore:

I watched in free time, from my bedroom window. A bit of cloud but I could see through it mostly without burning my retinas

In reply to jkarran:



Maybe the real bit of luck is the rock that fell out of the sky and finished off the dinosaurs, creating a lot of spare ecological,niches for our mammal ancestors to occupy, eventually leading to us!

In reply to FesteringSore:

I watched it through a welding mask, somehow it didn't seem very extra ordinary, I did see totality in 1999 though so maybe I wanted more, later in the day I asked the lads at the other end of the yard if they'd seen it, and one reply was, 'what there's bin an eclipse?'

I'm not sure what planet some people are livin on.

In reply to winhill:









That is an absolute scandal ... and doesn't actually fit with my small knowledge of Hinduism as I encountered it and discussed it with various Nepalese on an Everest trek.

Does such a school in Southall really have the legal right to stop children from watching it?

In reply to John Simpson:



My feeling about an eclipse is that it's just one of millions of other 'wonderful' natural phenomena, and that people don't appreciate enough what is wonderful about nature all around them. Just one flock of birds is a least as interesting to me.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I agree with that, we're on this wonderful nature reserve in the vaste expanse of emptiness light years away from the next habitable planet, and a lot of people treat earth like a giant skip, somewhere along the line there's got to be a massive shift in outlook.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

+1

Or a seeding breaking the surface to bless us with it's greenness

Or some moss between the flags

Beauty is everywhere

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


Yes, but part of the beauty of an eclipse is it's rarity value, giving us something truly extraordinary from what we usually just take for granted, reminding us of the vastness of the geometry of the solar system and perhaps jolting us out of our compacency to really appreciate the wonder of the world around us. I found something genuinely moving about today's eclipse. Now I really want to experience totality.

In reply to moffatross:


Brilliant!

In reply to FesteringSore:

Set up my telescope + solar filter at school and awaited viewers. No organised plan. Result was lessons delayed by 15 minutes as a huge queue developed to peer in. Most were blown away by what they saw. Spontaneous learning. Marvellous. No lesson plan. No register.

Perfect weather in mid Wales and most noticeable effect was the sudden drop in temperature as the radiant heat all but disappeared.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I've been hearing from many other teacher collegues where their Headteachers have denied them a perfect contextual learning experience for fear of Elf n Safety repercussions! I am utterly disappointed though not surprised as it appears to be that cognitive biases are creeping in in these decision where because they can't think of a way of looking at the sun safely, there mustn't be a way to do it safely! totally scandalous and educationally criminal.

In reply to higherclimbingwales:
Same here cloud too thick and internet not playing switched the lights off and it did get darker outside but nothing spectacular. Kids were quite patient but my TA got annoyed.

Told not to let the kids look at it in case they burnt their eyes.
Some had pinhole boxes.

My mum managed to project it through a colander which I would have done if sunny.

In reply to higherclimbingwales:

Agreed. An absolute disgrace. They could easily be provided with goggles, or better, they could make their own goggles out of the correct filter material and/or make pinhole camera/s as a worthwhile and interesting science project.

In reply to All:

This really does take the piss - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/school-children-banned-from-...

Absolutely pathetic.

In reply to FesteringSore:



Watched eclipse from London.
Theres nothing I can say, it was totally shit from the start.

In reply to earlsdonwhu:


My post was intended rather more to be a superb & witty play on words, rather than an expression of opinion of the entertainment value of the event.......