We have just returned from a short vacation to a city about 4 hours east of us. Brian's parents came to Turkey to visit us and to see the solar eclipse that God scheduled for the area this week. It was a cool experience. Wednesday morning we shopped in the little town for a bit and then after lunch settled on the terrace of our hotel where we had a front row seat to totality. The eclipse started around 12:40 and took about an hour and a half from start to finish. Brian had ordered some special glasses from the states that blocked out all light except a small bit from the sun. Once the eclipse started he and I walked around and handed some out to the locals who didn't really want them at first. There was a truck traveling the streets telling them that there was going to be an eclipse and not to look at the sun with the naked eye. We explained that the glasses were made so that you could look at it and that if they looked now they could see that it had already started and we had a few takers. Once one person looked at it and exclaimed "yarim, yarim!" which translates "half, half" we had many takers. They couldn't believe that the sun was being covered by the moon and only half of it was shining! After about 15 minutes of that we went back to the hotel so we didn't miss the main event! It was amazing how quickly it went from some light to darkness...literally seconds! Totality lasted about 3 minutes and was really amazing. The stars came out and everything. It was a great time!
I took this picture by holding a pair of the cardboard eclipse glasses over the lense of the camera. It actually worked better than I thought it would. This is leading up to totality. You can see how much light is filtered out by the glasses. The sliver is what we could see of the sun at this point. Without the glasses we couldn't even look at it because it was still too bright!
A picture of totality. Pretty cool! We could view this without the protective glasses on.
Brian and I modeling our eclipse glasses. Don't we look hip!
Erica and Will watching the moon slowly move in front of the sun. You can see how light it was even though the moon was covering the sun halfway at this point!
4 comments:
Wow! That is so cool. Tell Brian that I am impressed that he thought to order the glasses.
I was impressed about that, too, and thought it must be his experience as a SCIENCE TEACHER!!! :) How dark was it when you looked around, really? ;)
You and Brian look so cute together in your glasses. I'm impressed your standing so close together-you weren't embarassed?
Amazing!
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