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Post-eclipse blues

Writer's picture: Mishkat BhattacharyaMishkat Bhattacharya

What happened - or rather did not - in Rochester, NY


The sun was out and shining the day before as well as the day after the eclipse (in fact it was kind of visible through the cloud cover about an hour before and afterwards), in Rochester, NY, but on Monday April 6 the eclipse got eclipsed - completely clouded out.


I had friends who had come in from out of town and we decided to go up to Lake Ontario (about 20 minutes drive from my home) for the viewing, trying to make the best of a disappointment, having reconciled ourselves to not being able to see the sun (or the moon).


Still, I would have to say that the eclipse was pretty spectacular. The way the darkness came on was quite dramatic, and its quality was quite high. Almost the entire sky was blacked out, except for a thin sliver of the horizon. If you did not look at that part of the horizon, it was quite easy to believe that it was about 10pm at night, rather than 3pm in the afternoon. The clouds were thick enough that no stars were visible.


But it was dark enough that the automated lighting on several of the buildings next to the lake came on, and then was switched off manually (the city had already disabled the automatic lighting downtown, where a big crowd was assembled to see the eclipse; the mayor said about 300,000 people were expected to come to Rochester for the viewing, I don't know if that was the number that actually came).


The fall in temperature was very noticeable. The passage of the darkness over about 3 minutes and its lifting was also quite amazing to watch. In general, I thought it was remarkable that the moon subtended an angle large enough to block out almost the entire sun (for those who could see it) as well as travel fast enough for it to slide past the sun in only a few minutes (both of these bodies are quite large).


Elsewhere


Pretty soon afterwards I received many spectacular images on my phone from relatives and friends who had succeeded in viewing both the sun and the moon. Some relatives had gone to Quebec. Some friends drove down to Erie, Pennsylvania where the cloud cover was predicted to be less than in Rochester. 5 minutes before the eclipse a black cloud covered the sun, so they jumped back in their car and drove a couple miles further so they could see the sun clearly. Eventually, they succeeded in watching the eclipse. Friends in NYC sent me pictures of the partial eclipse.


RIT did not close for the eclipse but distributed eclipse glasses and asked the professors to use discretion in scheduling classes. I canceled class on Monday and thought at first, since the eclipse had not shown up in its full glory in Rochester, that I had simply lost a slot for covering course material.


However, when I took a poll on Wednesday in class, a large number of students indicated that they had seen the full eclipse, as they had gone to Vermont and other places. So that made me feel better about not everything being in vain.


The future


For those who were disappointed, like me, the next total solar eclipse visible in the United States will be on August 23, 2044. Too far away? The next total solar eclipse outside of the United States will occur on August 12, 2026. This one will be visible in Russia, Greenland, Iceland and Spain. The duration of the totality will be 2 minutes, 18 seconds. 


Total solar eclipses occur every year and a half or so - though some of them can only be viewed under extreme conditions, such as from the Arctic - and some others than the ones mentioned can be found through the link provided above.











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