2917: Types of Eclipse Photo

|< < Prev Comic #2917 (April 8, 2024) Next > >|

Types of Eclipse Photo

Title text: The most rare, top-tier eclipse photo would be the Solar Earth Eclipse, but the Apollo 12 crew's attempt to capture it was marred by camera shake. They said it looked spectacular, though.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by an AUSTRALIAN CLOUD FROM THE FUTURE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic is about the recent total solar eclipse visible in North America. The last photograph refers to one in 2028 that will cross the Australian continent.

The Standard: A photo of the solar eclipse during totality, a typical photo most people might hope to take.

The Partial: A photo of the eclipse in progress, likely approaching totality. Another typical photo most viewers take as the eclipse progresses, or the sum total image that could have been taken if not able to be at the right time/place to properly observe totality.

The Reaction Shot: Some people will choose to take a photo of their reaction or their friends' and/or family's reaction. Typically, this style is chosen to document something more personal to the viewer, since a large number of photos of the eclipse already exist online,^{[citation needed]} and a shot of the crowd is perhaps a more foresighted way of documenting their personal presence under the phenomenon.

The Fancy Lens: A photo of this type, that features conspicuous solar prominences, will almost certainly require a lot more preparation and equipment (the 'fancy lens', a tripod or other mounting, etc).

The Focus Issues: People new or unaware of the difficulties of astral photography typically experience challenges focusing their lenses on astral bodies, especially if they are trying to fight against a confused auto-focus. The eclipse is no exception to this, and this type of photo popped up more frequently during this event because more people were taking photos of the sky than usual.

The Traffic Jam: On the way to the zone of totality many people got stuck in traffic. About 20 million people lived in the path of totality and some 200 million people in travel range, so many hundreds of thousands commuted to view the eclipse. As such, many people got stuck in traffic. They took ironic or embittered photos of their common predicament.

The Astronaut: Astronauts on the ISS had a particularly unique view of the solar eclipse, seeing the Moon's shadow on the Earth's surface.

The "Frustratedly Looking up the Cloud Situation in Australia for 2028": There were clouds over a large portion of the United States during the eclipse. Thus, a frustrated onlooker would likely be researching if the 2028 Australian eclipse will also be cloudy, giving them a second chance to see the eclipse in its full glory. Ironically, weather is difficult to predict 4 years in the future.

The title text refers to a photograph taken during the Apollo 12 mission when the Earth came between the spacecraft and the Sun on the journey back home from the Moon.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

Types of Eclipse Photo

[Eclipse during totality]

The standard

[Partial eclipse with lighter sky]

The partial

[Two Cueballs and Ponytail looking and pointing at the sky]

The reaction shot

[Eclipse during totality with red "ribbons" around the Moon]

The fancy lens

[A blurry ring of light in the center]

The focus issues

[The rear of an SUV]

The traffic jam

[A dark circle on Earth's surface]

The astronaut

[A gray cover of clouds]

The "frustratedly looking up the cloud situation in Australia for 2028"

Trivia

• The standard size image was uploaded with a resolution/size of 8920 by 6909, larger than the supposed 2x version at 1189 by 921. This was likely an error, and has since been fixed.

 add a comment! ⋅  add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅  refresh comments!

Discussion

The 'standard' and '2x' sized images had unexpected sizes, so a Trivia section has been automatically generated, and an imagesize parameter has been added (at half size) to render the image consistently with other comics on this website. --TheusafBOT (talk) 06:16, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

If you're going to keep doing this wrong, please disable the bot, just stop doing it. I, for one, would like to see this huge image, but this all makes it seem like a myth you're trying to start. *sigh* This bot is just a tease and it's aggravating. NiceGuy1 (talk) 04:31, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

8920x6909?! JLZ0kTC5 (talk) 06:21, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Title text likely refers to this image [1], and may also refer to Alan Bean destroying the color tv camera on that same mission by pointing it inadvertently at the sun. 172.69.140.145 07:03, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Cleveland, Ohio Science Center had a terrific view and NASA research and public relations teams were out in force. It was terrific. All of my photos are of the Focus and Crowd variety.Iggynelix (talk) 12:00, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I've seen one in 1999. It was glorious. Huge shadow crossing a large lake at a million miles an hour.

Lots of pixels today MrCandela (talk) 09:26, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Why did Munroe do this??? I opened the email (I get it emailed because I'm too lazy to check the website) and it crashed my computer. Three times. Surely it wasn't intentional... By me. (talk) 10:25, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Is it just me, or is "solar earth eclipse" just a synonym for things like "sunset" and "night"? 172.70.174.209 11:17, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

-Yes, but these things are more interesting when you are as far away as the moon and Earth's "night" still reaches you. 172.70.111.174 16:45, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the 'Solar Earth Eclipse' is a reference to the Earth eclipsing the Sun for the Apollo 12 crew. That must have been spectacular. As someone who witnessed his first total solar eclipse in Western Australia in April 2023, I'm very much looking forward to the 2028 eclipse across Australia. Seriously considering driving past the mountains if the forecast looks cloudy for Sydney... 108.162.249.36 12:07, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

How did that work though? We have total and annular solar eclipses look the way they do because the angular diameter of the Moon and the Sun are almost exactly the same when viewed from Earth. In the supposed photo of Earth eclipsing the Sun, the apparent size of Sun and the body eclipsing it are likewise similar. But the diameter of the Earth is more than 3 times the diameter of the Moon, so for their angular diameters to be similar, the photo would have needed to been taken from a distance from the Earth more than 3 times the Earth-Moon distance. Did the trajectory of Apollo 12 have such a point? Or does the photo that's described in many places as the Solar Earth Eclipse actually show the Moon eclipsing the Sun? If so, do we have a photo of the actual Solar Earth Eclipse?

The crescent is the Earth's atmosphere backlit by the sun, not a direct line of sight to the edge of the solar disk. As you say the solar disk is much smaller than the Earth's disk at that distance. 172.70.111.141 16:17, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

The partial photo looks more like a projection onto a sheet of paper with a pinhole camera than a direct shot of the eclipse. 162.158.91.60 18:25, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I have photos of a partial taken through a layer of cloud that look like that.172.70.85.120 11:43, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

There's another category he missed entirely: the "look at the weird shadows" one. This could be someone's pinhole camera, but could also be a colander, or even just the shadows cast by some random trees.

That makes zero sense. I missed it altogether because I already saw the Oct. 2023 one, and I was like "Nope."

The car shown in the traffic jam could potentially be a Mitsubishi Eclipse, but not likely... 172.68.26.202 19:12, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

WHEN IS THE APR 10 COMIC GUNNA COME OUT 172.68.34.17 21:01, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

hey guess what --172.69.79.139 06:49, 11 April 2024 (UTC)