(No, this one isn’t about fencing.)
At 6:23 pm PT, the effects of the partial eclipse were clearly visible in the tree shadow on our driveway. (And the shadow looked blurry in person, too.)
My husband and I decided that this evening we’d make of our occasional excursions for a meal at In’N’Out (not directly relevant for the story, but I just had to toss off the mention for those of you who suffer from In’N’Out envy), but we took some time before we left to take a look at the shadows in our driveway.
Took a bit of fiddling to get the right angle and reduce the jiggling.
We were off the main track of the eclipse, so all we got was a partial instead of the annular eclipse visible further east of us. But that was enough to entirely change the ambient light. Sunset tonight isn’t until 8:15, but at 6:15 this evening the light looked as though the sun was right at the horizon, about to set. Not quite as weird as the partial eclipse I saw back in 1970, when at mid-day in a cloudless sky, the light was comparable to a solidly overcast day, but definitely out of the ordinary.
Dave got out his binoculars (he’s a physics and astronomy guy, so he’s usually ready for science-y opportunities like this) and held them up so the sun could shine through them onto his shadow on the driveway. It took a couple of minutes to find the right angle and steady his grasp enough so that the sliver of sunlight was clearly visible:
Got it!
Then when we got to the In’N’Out, the tree shadows in their parking lot were even better:
Tree shadows in the parking lot at 6:35 pm.
Mary Griffith 