Solar-eclipse gazing
The celestial event from last week was a tough one to miss, thanks to the media blitzkrieg positioning it as ‘one in a lifetime’. After all the last time a solar eclipse crossed the US in full earnest was over a 100 years back.
Inspite of New Jersey falling into a partial eclipse zone, there was a lot of local excitement here, and there were several ‘watching parties’ organised. Though the real thing turned a dampener with some mild change in lights and a cloudy weather, a lot of people did come out in the open to catch a glimpse.
Unfortunately, whether it was over-excitement or casual-treatment of the watching guidelines, supposedly a lot of people ended up catching a glimpse with their naked eyes. Not surprisingly, the search for the term ‘my eyes hurt’ peaked on google soon after the eclipse.
Working through the afternoon of the eclipse, and ending up without protective gear, I ended up watching-the-people-watching-the-eclipse. Here in this picture from an office in Princeton, you can see the excitement in the air, and surprisingly most of the solar-eclipse gazers are on with nothing but coolers, mobile phone or no gear at all.
Here is a picture of the eclipse from near the path of totality.
