2917: Types of Eclipse Photo

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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.

On the day of this comic's release, a total solar eclipse traversed North America, allowing a substantial portion of the United States to view this phenomenon. Total eclipses in any given area are rare enough and impressive enough that witnessing it was a huge event for many people, both those living in the zone of totality and the many people who traveled specifically to view it. This strip addresses the event through different types of photos that people might take.

The Standard: A photo of the solar eclipse during totality, a typical photo most people might hope to take. This photograph captures the sun totally blocked by the moon, with a barely visible ring of light around the outside.

The Partial: A photo of the eclipse in progress, likely approaching totality. Another typical photo most viewers take as the eclipse progresses, and the only type of image available to people outside the zone of totality.

The Reaction Shot: During an eclipse, people tend to gather outside in crowds to witness the event in person. Images of people gathering and looking up at the sky capture the human side of this event, and is likely to be more personal to the person taking the photo (particularly since the people may be their friends and family).

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: Since the experience of a total eclipse is only available in a specific geographical range, it's extremely common for people to travel to view them, particularly when this range is near to heavily populated areas (as in this case). The number of people trying to get into a particular area for a particular event naturally causes huge issues of traffic and accommodations. One example is traffic jams, which can become huge and last for many hours. The Daily Gazette in reports a number (photo 1, photo 2) of traffic related slowdowns in Schenectady, New York as people return from viewing the eclipse. It states many people spent double the normal time to get to their destination as compared to normal (non post-eclipse) travel. The irony of waiting in traffic for hours in order to see an event lasting several minutes can be frustrating, and an image of the traffic jam may be a bitter way to capture this irony.

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. Forbes has an article that shows the pictures of the eclipse from NASA and the International Space Station in orbit 250 miles above the earth.

The "Frustratedly Looking up the Cloud Situation in Australia for 2028": There were clouds over a large portion of the United States during the 2024 eclipse. For a large portion of the country, this meant that heavy cloud cover blocked their view of the sun during the eclipse, badly impacting the viewing experience. This was naturally highly undesirable, particularly those who had planned and travelled to see it. The joke here is that such a person, seeing only clouds during the eclipse, might try to figure out the next time that seeing an eclipse would be possible. There will be a total eclipse passing over Australia and New Zealand in 2028. For someone in the United States, this would require a much more significant trip than the 2024 trip, but someone who missed one eclipse might be willing to go to extremes to see another. The irony is that weather is impossible to accurately predict 4 years in the future, so such a plan would involve the risk of traveling halfway around the world, only to miss another eclipse due to weather.

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.

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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)