by Jane Houston Jones
What makes astronomy most fun is when you get to share a special moment with others. Many of you viewed last night's partial eclipse of the sun with friends, or with neighbors or by yourself or with people you have never met before. No matter who you viewed it with, I hope you got to view it. It'll be a long wait for the next one visible from our neighborhoods.
To me, astronomy is bringing a universe of people together...to share a common discovery, an amazing view, a good joke, a question or two or three, or just to share the eclipse of a star. Many of us shared a special view of our very special star, the sun last night. We watched the moon take a big bite out of the sun and we learned why it happened, and we told the person next to us all about it.
Out on Harrison Street in the Mission District of San Francisco Pete, Sarah and I set up four safe-solar telescopes and waited to see what would happen. We weren't part of a big eclipse extravaganza, we weren't mentioned on the radio or in the newspaper, but we were the star warriers of San Francisco, special eclipse division. We set up our telescopes to lassoo the eclipse for our guests and show and explain it to all who walked by our litle sidewalk on planet earth.
Soon people walked by on their way home from work and took a look at the solar eclipse. They looked at the first views of the eclipse and called their families on cell phones, who joined them for a later look. Others from our sidewalk astronomers email list family, nice people like Charlie and Alex and Erik, stopped by and helped man the telescopes, and shared their own personal thrill with many people they had never met before. Alex brought his own telescope, pin-hole image variety, and everyone was interested in the view, so much so, that each of Alex's two pieces of paper had to be cut in half and given to two people by the end of the night.
People brought their friends to the view, and yet other friends met new friends. I'll bet we had over 150 people stop for an eclipse view. Maybe more but I wasn't really counting.
I could tell you all about the eclipse, and we could reminisce about the first notch or bite taken out of the sun a few minutes after 6:00 p.m. tonight. Or tell you about the thrill of watching the giant sunspots disappear into darkness from the surface of the sun. Or I could tell you about seeing that last exquisite view of the sun in eclipse, before the sun dipped below the buildings across the street, exactly when the eclipse was over.
But you would have had to be there with us on Harrison Street to really know what I am writing about. We won't see another partial lunar eclipse in San Francisco for 8 years. Would you like to join us then? I'll be the one with the homemade telescopes and homemade solar filters.
Here is an image gallery from eclipse night...enjoy!
http://www.sfsidewalkastronomers.org/eclipse/index.html