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| Ring of Fire as seen in Buffalo, NY in May 1994 Taken from Oregon Live |
You might know that Sunday, May 20 was the Annular Solar Eclipse where parts of the world witnessed a fabulous Ring of Fire effect as the Moon passed between the Sun and the Earth. Here in Buffalo, NY we got to see part of the lower right quadrant of the Sun be blocked by the Moon before it set behind the horizon; nothing like it was in May 1994.
We decided this was a rare opportunity to learn more about this phenomena and kept Olivia up a little late for the event. We headed down to a beach south of Buffalo to get a full view of the sunset, horizon, and whatever part of the eclipse we could see. Arriving a little early, I was able to give a little tour of where I lived while growing up and share some stories with the family. We also looked for fossils common to the shale cliffs of Lake Erie and were able to find some amazing shells.
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| Olivia holding the eclipse glasses on her face. |
When we got to the beach, a family offered us some spare Solar Eclipse glasses. We all thought it was very nice and offered our thanks. It turns out the glasses weren't of much use by the time things got started because the sun was ducking behind some clouds making it harder to see through the glasses.
We watched as the Moon covered the lower right portion of the Sun and ventured home. Luckily we were able to catch the rest on Ustream from Scottys_Sky. We bumped around a few "live" feeds but found them lacking an actual live feed but instead were either a play-by-play announcement or periodically updated snapshots.
Scottys_Sky was live near Area 51 and had a live feed. We sat back and watched in delight as the Moon, Sun, and Earth came into alignment and formed the Ring of Fire effect. We got terrific commentary from the feed, nice crowd interaction and play with the folks at his site, and thoroughly enjoyed his efforts to broadcast this terrific event. Kudos to him.
Olivia was enamored by the experience. It is giving us a few great days of talking about, learning about, and being excited about the basics of space. She's even mocking up demonstrations we played out on the beach where she is the Earth and some rocks form the Sun and Moon. I'm amazed how quickly she grasps concepts like orbits and how objects can pass between one another in space.
Better yet, we got to experience the event as a family (including Uncle Foley). Here's some pictures of the evening.
So what of Calypso? Olivia was so excited about the beach, the dinner, and the family fun that she asked if we could come see the Calypso every night. After we figured out she was enjoying some word play with us, we began to meme the idea of Harry Belafonte providing a beachside serenade to us every night. We had a good family laugh.
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| A sunset family photograph |
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| Uncle Foley, Dad, and Olivia taking in the horizon. |
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| The sun setting at Hamburg beach. Look to the lower right of the picture and you'll see, ever so slightly, the beginning of the eclipse. |
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| Showing Olivia the way the Moon is beginning to cover the Sun. |
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