Yesterday was pretty great. I had seen a solar eclipse last year while down around Austin and enjoy when there are solar or lunar eclipses, also meteor showers. This one looked like it would be wonderful, didn’t know if it would get pitch black outside. I was already at downtown Glen Rose attending the Somervell County Commissioners Court, considered staying down there for 3-4 hours waiting for the event, but decided to watch from home.
What was cool was the yard growing dark during the time the moon was covering the sun. Didn’t fully black out but still mysterious!
The temperature dropped and hub and I also saw some wavy lines on the porch on the ground. What were they? Looked it up and apparently no one knows for sure.
As millions of Americans look to the sky on Monday to witness the total solar eclipse, a group of young astronomers from the University of Pittsburgh will be in a sparse pocket of the Texas Hill Country trying to crack a 200-year-old mystery.
Shadow bands are thin, wavy lines of alternating light and dark that seem to race across the ground in the minute or so right before, and right after, the moon completely blocks out the sun.
No one knows why this phenomenon occurs. But since German astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt wrote about it in 1820, a couple of theories have emerged.
The leading hypothesis is that shadow bands are caused by atmospheric turbulence. In the brief moments before and after the moon completely obscures the sun, just a sliver of light is visible. As that sliver travels down through the Earth’s atmosphere, it hits air pockets of different densities. That causes refraction patterns to create the undulating shadows.
Dallas Morning News has an article that includes a photo of eclipse among the dinosaur statues at Dinosaur Valley State Park, where a large crowd showed up. Also saw people in downtown Glen Rose (although I didn’t stay long enough to watch the larger crowds appear)
Added Eclipse Jokes from Jimmy Kimmel last night
