The Eclipse, the Eclipse!!

[Jehanne]

And looking at the big picture:


Here we have a nice, comfortable G2 star.  And a tidally evolved moon, which is large enough to be reasonably spherical (but still possessing interesting topography), that as seen from the earth's surface is very close to exhibiting the same angular size as that G2 star.  And to put some numbers to it, the sun is 400 times larger than the moon, but the sun is also 400 times (m/l) further away.

And as the moon's orbit tidally evolved (it receded from the earth) we infer in the past it was much closer and although eclipses would have been more frequent, they would have also been much less interesting as the apparent size of the moon would have blotted out the interesting sight of the suns prominences and corona.  Additionally, in the future, as the moon continues to recede eventually total eclipses will cease and they will all be annular, that is, the moon will never appear large enough to blot out the entire disk of the sun's surface.

Add all this up, a comfy planet, apparent size of sun and moon being 'close enough', orbital parameters of the moon (inclination, eccentricity, nodes, apsides, saros, etc) and we quite possibly enjoy . . .


[drum roll]


the BEST eclipses in the galaxy.


ENJOY !!!

How about reducing the inclination of the lunar orbit so he get more eclipses?

Well, the Moon has a mass of 7.34767309 × 10^22 kilograms.  Giving it a "meaningful" acceleration of 0.1 mm/s^2 would require a force equal to:

(7.34767309 × 10^22) * (0.0001) = 7,347,673,090,000,000,000 Newtons, or 7,347,673,090,000,000,000 Joules/meter.

The largest hydrogen bomb (the Tsar bomb) yielded 209,200,000,000,000,000 Joules of energy, or about 2% of the energy that it would take to accelerate the Moon through 1 meter.  Of course, all of that energy would need to be concentrated at a particular point on the Moon's surface and would all need to be converted into the Moon's kinetic energy.

---

Things look pretty crappy for Nebraska tomorrow.

"Go East, young man, go East!!"

P.S.  It may be better to go West:



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capi...00abef37f9

[Anomalocaris]

How about reducing the inclination of the lunar orbit so he get more eclipses?

Well, the Moon has a mass of 7.34767309 × 10^22 kilograms.  Giving it a "meaningful" acceleration of 0.1 mm/s^2 would require a force equal to:

(7.34767309 × 10^22) * (0.0001) = 7,347,673,090,000,000,000 Newtons, or 7,347,673,090,000,000,000 Joules/meter.

The largest hydrogen bomb (the Tsar bomb) yielded 209,200,000,000,000,000 Joules of energy, or about 2% of the energy that it would take to accelerate the Moon through 1 meter.  Of course, all of that energy would need to be concentrated at a particular point on the Moon's surface and would all need to be converted into the Moon's kinetic energy.

---

I see that can be difficult.  How about moving the sun up from the current ecliptic plane to better align the new ecliptic with the plane of lunar orbit?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Weather forecasting is an exact science. Exactly what we're not sure."

[vorlon13]

With a pretty much uniform shitty forecast anywhere I can get to, I'm thinking now might want to head to Broken Bow area as I at least have off road permission to watch there.

Also, was considering a "Plan B":

Taking an eclipse cruise in 2018. And then find out no total solar eclipses that year. OK, what about 2019? Nice South Pacific cruises look feasible then, but it occurs to me I HATE HATE HATE even the 1 hour time change spring/fall, how am I going to handle an 8 hour change (or more) ?? Hate to be becoming a stick in the mud but as I get older that DST thing is really starting to chafe, trying to accommodate multiple hours of time zones in hours/days would leave me a zombie of sorts, and then a week or 2 of hell when I get home.

Fuck . . .

[Court Jester]

I'm in central Indiana so I wont get 100% but it should be a solid 95ish. I'm going to the roof of the plant to check it out.

[brewer]

I'm in central Indiana so I wont get 100% but it should be a solid 95ish. I'm going to the roof of the plant to check it out.

A giant bean stalk? Well OK Jack.

[Court Jester]

That would be cooler.

[Astreja]

I've made landfall in Carbondale and my hashtag #Saros145FTW will contain occasional updates for the morning pre-eclipse, and some of the partial phase.
 
(But tweet during totality?  No effin' way!)

[chimp3]

How about reducing the inclination of the lunar orbit so he get more eclipses?

Well, the Moon has a mass of 7.34767309 × 10^22 kilograms.  Giving it a "meaningful" acceleration of 0.1 mm/s^2 would require a force equal to:

(7.34767309 × 10^22) * (0.0001) = 7,347,673,090,000,000,000 Newtons, or 7,347,673,090,000,000,000 Joules/meter.

The largest hydrogen bomb (the Tsar bomb) yielded 209,200,000,000,000,000 Joules of energy, or about 2% of the energy that it would take to accelerate the Moon through 1 meter.  Of course, all of that energy would need to be concentrated at a particular point on the Moon's surface and would all need to be converted into the Moon's kinetic energy.

---

Things look pretty crappy for Nebraska tomorrow.

"Go East, young man, go East!!"

P.S.  It may be better to go West:



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capi...00abef37f9

I will be on that sweet spot one third of the way between Nashville and St. Louis.

[The Industrial Atheist]

It looks like I will get a good view of the Eclipse. I'm not sure exactly how that's done. It seemed like we had a lesser eclipse when I was in the eighth grade and we used some contraption to safely see it.