APOD: Annular Solar Eclipse (2012 May 19)

APOD Robot · Post by **APOD Robot** » Sat May 19, 2012 4:07 am

Annular Solar Eclipse

Explanation: Tomorrow, May 20, the Moon's shadow will race across planet Earth. Observers within the 240-300 kilometer wide shadow track will be able to witness an annular solar eclipse as the Moon's apparent size is presently too small to completely cover the Sun. Heading east over a period of 3.5 hours, the shadow path will begin in southern China, cross the northern Pacific, and reach well into North America, crossing the US west coast in southern Oregon and northern California. Along the route, Tokyo residents will be just 10 kilometers north of the path's center line. Of course a partial eclipse will be visible from a much larger area within North America, the Pacific, and eastern Asia. This safely filtered telescopic picture was taken during the annular eclipse of January 15, 2010 from the city of Kanyakumari at the southern tip of India.

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bystander · Post by **bystander** » Sat May 19, 2012 4:11 am

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=28575

Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Sat May 19, 2012 4:40 am

The Golden circle. NICE!!

Moonlady · Post by **Moonlady** » Sat May 19, 2012 5:52 am

Diamond ring is beautiful and this fiery golden ring is not less lovely...Sad, can't chase tomorrows solar eclipse, my first and only chase was 1999, traveling with train and buses to
south Germany to catch it, it was partly cloudy that day, but luckly had sight of total eclipse, protuberances which I didn't expect to see but was glad I could, and Venus shining
in the middle of the day!
While the total eclipse, all birds around me were silent, it became windy and cold.
Next total solar eclipse in Germany will be in 2081, but I think I will not last that long, or I will have to find the elixir

!

Flase · Post by **Flase** » Sat May 19, 2012 6:07 am

It's an interesting coincidence that the Moon and the Sun have the same apparent diameter from Earth. Some people don't believe in coincidences.

Could it be that some forces of nature made the Moon orbit at a distance where some resonance, gravitational or otherwise, exists with the Sun?

Ann · Post by **Ann** » Sat May 19, 2012 6:42 am

Flase wrote:It's an interesting coincidence that the Moon and the Sun have the same apparent diameter from Earth. Some people don't believe in coincidences.

Could it be that some forces of nature made the Moon orbit at a distance where some resonance, gravitational or otherwise, exists with the Sun?

Fascinating, False. I was just going to bring that up.

It really is an incredible coincidence that two bodies so wildly different in size would be located at such distances from the Earth that they look identical in size. It is, indeed, quite fantastic.

Personally I rather doubt the idea of the resonance with the Sun, although I'm speaking purely from a gut feeling and not from any scientific knowledge. Even so, I think this amazing order of things tells us something. For example, maybe it is good for life to be orbiting a star with the size, mass and temperature of the Sun from the same distance as the Earth. (Yeah, that is good... habitable zone and all, duh...

)

All right, yes, but maybe the Earth has also got a favorable size and mass, and even composition. I remain unconvinced that it would have been better for life if the Earth had had significantly more water than it actually does.

And maybe, who knows, maybe the Moon really has helped getting life going on the Earth, and maybe it has actually helped preserve life here, too. Maybe the Moon could only do that if its own size and mass was right for the "job".

As for the Earth-Moon distance, the Moon is actually receding slowly from the Earth, due to the fact that the Earth's rotation is slowing down. The Moon really is "putting the brakes on the rotation of the Earth". Let's hope the Earth never stops rotating, though, and never gets a "day" that is several weeks long. The consequences for the climate would be terrible, or at least I think so.

The fact that the Moon is slowly increasing its distance from us is a little sad, too. There will be fewer and fewer eclipses in the future, and eventually there will be none. It could well be that the Earth will not be habitable by the time when there are no more eclipses, not because of the Moon, but because of the Sun. The Sun is destined to grow larger, eventually making life on the Earth impossible.

We are lucky, though, that the Moon is slowly moving away from us. What if it had been the other way round? What if the Moon had been sinking lower and lower until it was torn apart by the Earth's gravity and crashed onto the Earth as the mother of all meteorite storms?

Today's (tomorrow's?) annular eclipse is a reminder of the amazing stability the Earth has enjoyed for many millions and possibly billions of years.

Ann

Flase · Post by **Flase** » Sat May 19, 2012 8:43 am

Ann wrote:
Flase wrote:It's an interesting coincidence that the Moon and the Sun have the same apparent diameter from Earth. Some people don't believe in coincidences.

Could it be that some forces of nature made the Moon orbit at a distance where some resonance, gravitational or otherwise, exists with the Sun?
Personally I rather doubt the idea of the resonance with the Sun, although I'm speaking purely from a gut feeling and not from any scientific knowledge.

I'm thinking that their tidal forces on Earth are approximately equal...

Ann wrote: Even so, I think this amazing order of things tells us something. For example, maybe it is good for life to be orbiting a star with the size, mass and temperature of the Sun from the same distance as the Earth. (Yeah, that is good... habitable zone and all, duh... )
All right, yes, but maybe the Earth has also got a favorable size and mass, and even composition. I remain unconvinced that it would have been better for life if the Earth had had significantly more water than it actually does.
And maybe, who knows, maybe the Moon really has helped getting life going on the Earth, and maybe it has actually helped preserve life here, too. Maybe the Moon could only do that if its own size and mass was right for the "job".

You seem to imply that God planned a nice comfortable home just for us and put things in just the right places. Maybe that's not the way he works. I would imagine that it's more about the predictability of randomness that life inevitably exists in some places across the universe.

Ann wrote:As for the Earth-Moon distance, the Moon is actually receding slowly from the Earth, due to the fact that the Earth's rotation is slowing down. The Moon really is "putting the brakes on the rotation of the Earth". Let's hope the Earth never stops rotating, though, and never gets a "day" that is several weeks long. The consequences for the climate would be terrible, or at least I think so.

The fact that the Moon is slowly increasing its distance from us is a little sad, too. There will be fewer and fewer eclipses in the future, and eventually there will be none. It could well be that the Earth will not be habitable by the time when there are no more eclipses, not because of the Moon, but because of the Sun. The Sun is destined to grow larger, eventually making life on the Earth impossible.

We are lucky, though, that the Moon is slowly moving away from us. What if it had been the other way round? What if the Moon had been sinking lower and lower until it was torn apart by the Earth's gravity and crashed onto the Earth as the mother of all meteorite storms?

You remind me of a TV programme where these astrophysicists were saying the Sun will start getting hotter in a billion years and eventually burn us over billions of years so we'll have to "high-tail it" before then. I think we can relax. There's no hurry... In fact will it be before the Andromeda galaxy collides with this one?

Ann · Post by **Ann** » Sat May 19, 2012 9:32 am

Flase wrote:
You seem to imply that God planned a nice comfortable home just for us and put things in just the right places. Maybe that's not the way he works. I would imagine that it's more about the predictability of randomness that life inevitably exists in some places across the universe.

No, for the record, God is not a part of the universe I envision. I am perfectly open to the idea that life, at least complex life and technological civilizations, might require very special conditions, and that we happen to live under such conditions because, well, otherwise we wouldn't have been here to observe them.

You can certainly argue that the existence of life on the Earth or in the Universe appears very unlikely, when you sit down and consider what it takes for life to exist. For example, the fundamental forces of the Universe appear to be extremely "fine-tuned". If these fundamental forces had been only slightly different, then stars, planets and let alone human beings couldn't have existed. There are two explanations for this amazing fine-tuning that immediately come to mind. One is that God created the Universe this way, so that we could live in it. The other explanation is that our Universe is part of a multiverse. The multiverse idea says that new universes are continually being born, each with their own set of fundamental forces. Ours is the only one that we can observe, because ours may be the only one that has ever allowed beings like ourselves to exist in the first place.

Similarly, I believe (although I may be totally wrong) that the rise of complex life, let alone technological civilizations, require "fine-tuned" solar systems even in our own, perfectly "fine-tuned" universe. Our solar system does appear to be very "fine-tuned", at least from the Earth's point of view. There are two possible explanations for this. Either God made our solar system fine-tuned, so that we could live in it. Or else pure chance must make sure that a few solar systems should provide perfect conditions for complex life and technological civilizations, given that there are billions of galaxies in our universe and likely billions of solar systems at least in large galaxies like our own.

(There is of course a third possibility, namely that life, even complex life and technological civilizations, is far, far more common than I believe it is. And then the apparently similar size of the Sun and the Moon as seen from the Earth may be just an Earthly curiosity, not something that has anything at all to do with the presence of advanced life forms on the Earth.)

Ann

Flase · Post by **Flase** » Sat May 19, 2012 10:08 am

I tend to think that the fact that there are creatures such as weasels and toads (and sometimes even human beings) that exhibit intelligence and consciousness and yet adhere to all the laws of nature is evidence that such consciousness is part of the universe and inevitably exists elsewhere.

neufer · Post by **neufer** » Sat May 19, 2012 2:00 pm

Flase wrote:
I'm thinking that their tidal forces on Earth are approximately equal...

Tidal forces & apparent angular size are intimately related physically.

If the density of the Sun & Moon were equal then
then the Sun & Moon tidal forces on the Earth would also be equal
(simply because their angular sizes are equal).

However, the density of the Moon is ~2.4 times greater than the density of the Sun;
therefore, the tidal forces of the Moon are ~2.4 times greater than the tidal forces of the Sun.

Tides are driven by the Moon but modulated (between intensities 1.4 & 3.4) by the Sun.

Chris Peterson · Post by **Chris Peterson** » Sat May 19, 2012 2:45 pm

Flase wrote:It's an interesting coincidence that the Moon and the Sun have the same apparent diameter from Earth.

It's no coincidence in size and distance at all. Since the distance between the Earth and Moon is constantly increasing, the coincidence is that they happen to have the same angular diameter at precisely the time when there's a species present on Earth to make note of that.

Some people don't believe in coincidences.

Then they are ignorant. The laws of nature (e.g. Gaussian and Poisson statistics) absolutely require them.

Could it be that some forces of nature made the Moon orbit at a distance where some resonance, gravitational or otherwise, exists with the Sun?

There is no Earth-Moon-Sun gravitational resonance.

neufer · Post by **neufer** » Sat May 19, 2012 4:13 pm

: [b][color=#0000FF]Phobos transits the Sun, seen by Mars Rover Opportunity on March 10, 2004[/color][/b]

Chris Peterson wrote:
Flase wrote:
It's an interesting coincidence that the Moon and the Sun have the same apparent diameter from Earth.
It's no coincidence in size and distance at all. Since the distance between the Earth and Moon is constantly increasing, the coincidence is that they happen to have the same angular diameter at precisely the time when there's a species present on Earth to make note of that.

In about 7.6 million years Phobos will have descended to the point that it's angular size of ~ 19' (at the Martian equator) will approximate the size of the sun at aphelion... at which point Phobos will promptly disintegrate into a planetary ring.

Flase wrote:
Some people don't believe in coincidences.

Chris Peterson wrote:
Then they are ignorant. The laws of nature (e.g. Gaussian and Poisson statistics) absolutely require them.

The laws of human nature absolutely require a careful selection of random Gaussian and Poisson statistics.

'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and Gaussian and Poisson statistics.'

Chris Peterson wrote:
Could it be that some forces of nature made the Moon orbit at a distance
where some resonance, gravitational or otherwise, exists with the Sun?
There is no Earth-Moon-Sun gravitational resonance.

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 7l#p132104

ta152h0 · Post by **ta152h0** » Sat May 19, 2012 7:15 pm

our local weatherman said " go east, young man ". So off to beyond Snoqualmie pass i will go, with a camera of course.

bystander · Post by **bystander** » Sat May 19, 2012 7:30 pm

ta152h0 wrote:our local weatherman said " go east, young man ". So off to beyond Snoqualmie pass i will go, with a camera of course.

Go South, Vollmers or Delta, CA, would be a good place to be, right along the center line of the eclipse.

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogle/S ... oogle.html

Wobbly Weeble · Post by **Wobbly Weeble** » Mon May 21, 2012 3:43 pm

Ann wrote:We are lucky, though, that the Moon is slowly moving away from us. What if it had been the other way round? What if the Moon had been sinking lower and lower until it was torn apart by the Earth's gravity and crashed onto the Earth as the mother of all meteorite storms?

Didn't that happen already - 4 billion years ago? I think we're 'lucky' it did.

Starship Asterisk*

APOD: Annular Solar Eclipse (2012 May 19)

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