Sunday, May 20, 2012

May 2012 Annular Eclipse At Sea

Reporting from 26*43'N, 125*28'W

WELL....nobody thought to bring any solar filters, so we're all being very careful, and only looking at the Sun when it's partially obscured by clouds.

There's a big bite out of the Sun, and it's noticeably darker than normal for this time of day.

Other than that, no excitement, nothing to report. The seas are calm, and we're only rolling a little bit.

I mad a BIG mistake yesterday by having too much for lunch, and it caught up to me about dinner time. My first day out I get a little queasy, so I eat light, and try to take an afternoon nap.

Didn't do either this time, and by 7PM I wasn't feeling too crisp. Climbed in my bunk about 8pm, read for an hour, and then s;ept for about 12 hours!

I'm reading "Iron Eagle" by Thomas Coffey, and out of the three books I bought about General Curtis LeMay, I think it's the best.

I do a post about LeMay in the next week or so, after I've finished "Iron Eagle", and "Mission With LeMay", which is his biography. He's a very different man than the press, and unfortunately history, portray him as. He NEVER said "Bomb Them Back To The Stone Age", although that quote is often attributed to him. It actually came from "Mission With LeMay", and was fabricated by his ghost writer, MacKinlay Kantor. LeMay was in the middle of many things at the time his "biography" was being written, and didn't proof read it as completely as he should have. He later stated that he regretted not being more careful about what went in to the book, and as a result, a lot of misconceptions abound about him.

That's it for tonight. Going to watch a DVD, and hit the hay.

3 comments:

  1. It's a bit late for this, but the way to observe the sun when you don't have a good filter is by pinhole. Poke a pinhole in a sheet of thick paper or cardboard, and it projects an image onto what ever is behind it.

    You can also use any optically small gap like between your fingers, but it will take putzing around to get it right.

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  2. We tried that, but it was so cloudy out here it didn't work very well.
    I took some cardboard, cut out a section and taped some aluminum foil over the part I cut out, and tried several different sizes of pinholes.
    Plus the ship was moving around quite a bit, and we'd just about get it 'focused' at the right distance, and then hit a roller, and lose it.
    Oh, well....we at least kinda-sorta got to observe it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. LOL, you 'know' better... Sleep good!

    ReplyDelete

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