It's been a hot month for celestial events. Just a few hours ago, Venus could be seen passing in between us and the sun, appearing as a tiny black dot on its face. When my friend Eric encouraged me to borrow his viewing device, a thick piece of dark cellophane designed for such things (apparently it allows three minutes of direct sun-gazing), I was impressed. I first saw nothing, but when I heeded his advice to give it a second, a-ha! There it was -- the sun's best Cindy Crawford. Apparently this will not happen again until 2117, so I hope you got to witness it. If not, there are plenty of online pictures for the "armchair astronomer" to check out.
On May 20, San Francisco was buzzing. There was this bobolink in town that you've already heard about. The famous Bay to Breakers run thundered through the city. Preparations were being made for the GGB75 event. And there was to be an annular eclipse that evening. As I understand it, this is a partial eclipse that blocked all but the "annulus" of the sun, or 85 percent of it.
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| Annular eclipse, San Francisco, May 20, 2012. |
People gathered all over the city, as a strangely dim light enveloped us, to view the eclipse. Many resorted to their own creative methods of seeing it, as illustrated below. The woman has about four pair of sunglasses on, and the gent is projecting the image through his eyepiece onto a small improvised screen for others to see. I missed seeing an effect that I heard of later, where sun-dapples cast from trees during the eclipse were tiny round projections of the eclipse event.
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