August 21 2017 Total Solar Eclipse

Just giving a heads-up to (safely) watch the eclipse (no supposed meanings attached) cross the USA for those of you interested things will get pretty dark along the line. I have an article link attached. The first thing I noticed is that across the USA at least this thing travels in essentially a straight line. Of course a straight line on earth is a great circle arc, but it's the same path a projectile, sound, or a light beam would take. We start in the Northwest USA in the Portland Oregon area and it travels almost due east which is the direction to Charleston South Carolina from Portland on the opposite end of the country. If we were to face due east from Portland and go about 1/4 of the way around the world, we'd end up on the equator actually closer to Brazil than the continent of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean. Nevertheless, the eclipse ends closer to Africa once it passes the USA, which is a somewhat Northeast bearing (direction) from Portland. Why? The moon is on the ascending node which means it's not only moving generally eastward, but a tad northward as the alignment with the sun fads, thus moving the path north of the east-west line from Portland. Anyhoo, here are the maps.

National Eclipse - August 21, 2017

 

Here in Pa the sun was darkened about 75% and was like putting on sunglasses. Just a weird hue to everything similar to a hazy overcast. I was at work and brought my binoculars to project the image of the sun onto paper for all to see-- it was a crescent sun. A fellow co-worker had a filter over his telescopic camera and took some nice pictures. Yet others had welder's glass. Everyone all over the nation was having some sort of eclipse party and like one person stated, it brought everyone together to stop their fighting long enough to see this wonder.

 

There's no eclipse at the crucifixion because Passover happens on the 14th day of Nisan. The Jewish calendar is lunar based so the middle of the month is full moon. I could perhaps believe a lunar eclipse, but not a solar eclipse where the sun is darkened.

Also, I differ with "blood moons" always being an eclipse. A darkened sun and blood moon can simply be from atmospheric conditions, sand storms, volcanic ash and the like. We don't have to go very far with this when we see dull red sunset and reddish orange moons when there's a lot of atmospheric haze.

One night I saw this beautiful deep blood moon near setting about 11PM. A full moon does not set at that time but rather it was waxing gibbous just past first quarter. Then the wife got home and drove up the driveway. LOL