Eclipse Bound

Tomorrow we head for Oregon to prepare for the big total eclipse of the sun on Monday. Part of my duties will be to provide an eyepiece projection of the partial phases of the eclipse on the Jumbotron at Volcanoes Stadium in Keizer, OR. It should be interesting. Here's a chart I produced to give estimates of the amount of coverage of the sun throughout the eclipse.



The equation at the bottom is one that I derived for the area of overlap of two circles of unit radius with a center-to-center separation d. This equation is solved numerically for each percentage of coverage to produce the above set of images.

We will be staying at a hotel that is right next to a prime dragonflying spot, where we have seen River Jewelwings in the past. With luck, we may have some new and interesting odonate photos to share when we return. In the meantime, we're eclipse bound!