OH! What an Eclipse

[wizz]

I have just witnessed an event that i probably will never see again in my life, a total solar eclipse, or was it partial, anyway unless some genius invents a way to keep us all young, i will never see it again. I used my trusty camcorder to video it and i am now editing it on my Marvel. I hope the world doesn't end like all the predictions, i still want to buy a MAX.

Cheers to all those who saw it in the UK.

Tony

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[Ant]

Had about 96% here in Nottingham still a pretty damn cool experience

[Uwe]

Hi,

here in Bochum (Germany) we had too much clouds to see much of the "black sun".
But it was impressing nevertheless.

No I´m waiting for the evening-news to hear how many people got blind during the eclipse.

Bye, Uwe.

[merchant2112]

god im pathetic i wasn't even aware that there was an eclips i spend most of my free time in front of my basement terminal.


i have no life. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

somebody save me

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what is up with this it lost my pasword and i can't post as merchant2
oh and it woun't email me becuase it says more than one email account exists.

[SteveC]

It was great here in sunny southend - about 96% here too, and the clouds cleared to let us see it too. But I'm now blind, but hey, it's not something you see everyday!

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Cheers,
Steve

[Bomberman]

First I watched it on the BBC. Cool stuff, those solar eclipses. At that time the sky in Eindhoven (The Netherlands) was clear. Ten minutes later, when it would become visible here, BAM!, clouds all over the place. Damn, although it was 'only' 97% here, I wish I could have seen it. When the moon started to move away again the clouds disappeared. Damn dutch weather, I HATE IT. Oh well, maybe in a next livetime.........

[This message has been edited by Bomberman (edited 08-11-1999).]

[Scytale]

Very spooky here in Rotterdam, almost unreal. Partially cloudy. I used a floppy to look at the sun. I thought I was blind after the event but I soon discovered that I forgot to remove the disks from my eyes

[Zwisch]

Hi,

We still didn't get here... we are expecting the eclipse in a couple of hours...

I'll let you know if I go blind!!! (hmmm let's just say that you won't hear back form me if I go blind )

Ciao

Z

[ttd]

Boy, it got real dark here in Detroit while your eclipse happened. Oh, wait a minute, it was just because it was night.

[SteveC]

Scytale - I used a floppy too. Thr newest 3M disks were a bit thin though, so we needed to double up on them.

And ttd - that's a very special eclipse - when the earth gets in the way of the sun...

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Cheers,
Steve

[wizz]

"UK in panic as half the population go blind"

Now that could be a real post in the papers.

I work measuring the properties of light from a source (UV, Vis, NIR) and i know how dangerous it is to view this without the proper protection, if any of you have done so please have an eye check.

Did anybody notice the animals going crazy, i saw it at Bushy Park and the squirrels and birds were going mad, we live in a truly weird but wonderful world.

Tony

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[SteveC]

I noticed the birds go silent and also it suddenly went cold. Loads of these Human animals went strange and kept looking up to the sky.
If you've done some testing - do floppy disks block out anything important??

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Cheers,
Steve

[Jorden]

The eclipse here in Oosterhout was good visible between the clouds.. 97% and gorgeous to see, the surrounding sky going a whitish blue, and have you seen the shadows of plant-leaves all showing an eclipse-shadow??

The 'eclipse-glasses' I used were worse than the double CD I used...

Steve: neither a CD nor the floppy holds the UV-radiation, so you might have hurt your eyes, if you've watched without your glasses

Jorden.

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Holly is all I Love&Need !!
And some food and drink till she gets here...
Who has an abundance of Airmiles for Holly(Berri) ??

[wizz]

Steve,

I haven't tested on floppy discs in particular and i don't really know their properties, but during and eclipse (total/partial) the damage caused to the eyes is as a result of the Ultra Violet and Near-Infra-Red rays. The NIR rays in particular are what burn your retinas to cause blindness.

UV occurs from 200nm to 450nm the colour being blue.

Visible occurs at 300nm to 800nm colour green peaking for humans at about 550nm where we are most responsive.

Infra-Red from 800nm - 1400nm (NIR) it goes much higher than this. colour red.

The solar filters (goggles) on the market are mainly made from Aluminized Myta sandwiched together so you are effectively looking at the sun through metal.

Since you used a floopy i can see by looking through mine at the cloudy sun that its colour is red meaning that if it was an effective filter it would only block out the Visible and UV rays of the sun but let the NIR rays through and potentialy damaging the retinas.

You can tell the filters properties are by the colours. Red for blocking out UV, green for blocking out Visible and blue for Blocking out NIR. for the eclipse you need something in-between which is a bit special.

Depending on how long you were looking at the sun through the floppy, i would suggest an eye check just to make sure and next time, if we're still alive, buy the correct filters.

Tony

[SteveC]

wizz - Thanks for that lesson. I used two floppies, and so the sun was a very dark red. A single floppy gave a bright picture which worried me so that's why I doubled up. Too late to worry now, I'll hope I'll be OK, and to anyone else that tried a floppy! I even stuck a couple of layers over my camcorder for my dad to film it, but my dad's obviously not a very good cameraman....

While you're here, Do normal glasses offer any sort of protection against anything? Just plain plastic lenses with a mylar (?) coating.

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Cheers,
Steve