December 10, 2011
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Eclipse! Ok, let’s discuss ‘Counter-intuitive’
Never thought I’d get to where understanding the silly Moon taxed my mental resources with no hope of a refund.
This picture is what we see (saw) an hour ago from Israel, at 6:04 PM Local time. So far so good.
So how much is that in US dollars? Oops, wrong conversion.
We are two hours ‘ahead’ of Greenwich, England, the self-styled ‘Prime Meridian.
Now that doesn’t mean we just ‘decided’ to set our clocks 2 hours ‘ahead’ (‘later‘ on the clock, or you could say: ‘things happen earlier for us) No, our Geo-Reality precedes that of the UK by 2 hours: sunrise, sun-set, things like that which can’t be construed as ‘simultaneous on the entire planet.’
Stuff like the Kennedy assassination happened, conversely, at the same ‘world-time’ everywhere, so even though it was 12:30 in Dallas, it was already 7:30 PM here in the Holy Land.And now it gets worse: From the Moon-view, ‘up’ there at, say, the center of the disc visible to Earthlings, there is a ‘Solar’ eclipse happening. The Earth passes in between the Moon and its light-source, the Sun. And the time it takes for the Earth to ‘transit’ the Sun is the length of
the eclipse. As we watch from the Earth, we are seeing the Moon-people going through their Solar Eclipse, so to speak, gawking at us through welding helmets. The event takes a certain length of time, and happens ‘at the same time’ (roughly) on the entire Earth. But like with JFK, it happens ‘early evening’ in Israel, but ‘some other time’ at other locations on the globe.
So far so clear, but that’s where my trouble starts.
Eclipse in Alaska
(It just now ended here, by the way.(6:40-ish PM)And what ‘time’ is it in Alaska? Good Question. I usually take 7 hours ‘off’ our
time/reality first, to get to Pennsylvania, my second home, ‘over’ there in Eastern Standard Time. They are GMT minus 5, and so our 7 PM is their PA noon. Saturday noon. (Don’t forget that.) Then another 3 time zones gets you to California, and one further jump and we’re in Anchorage, a good place to tie up the boat for a second. And so ‘right now’ it is 8 AM in Alaska. Early Saturday morning. The Sun’s been up for a couple hours, and so they can’t see the Moon too cool.
So how come the news reports say that folks in Alaska can see the eclipse? Well, they just did,
but they saw it from its beginning, before their sunrise, on their early Saturday morning, and
possibly missed the very end. Hope they have a fun Saturday. Ours is like, over already. Dark and stupid outside, chickens roosting in the trees already.
Not sure I figured it out. Feels like there’s something missing…
Oh maybe that my camera cost a hundred dollars. That’s 377 shekels. Weighs about 200 grams, I’d say, a little less than a half a pound. In Alaska. Where Christmas is loudly on the way. While here, if you search hard, you can find a little piece on the back page of the paper saying it happened. Again? The 27th? I can never remember the date.
Comments (20)
Just way too many numbers for me. Makes my head hurt those numbers.
@A_Bella_Loca - Aha. So we’ll split the bill on head-ache remedy. Makes my head spin too, which is exactly why I just wrote this. Feels a little better now, but it’s no Valium-to-the-mind. Thanks for reading, and relax, it’s over, ha.
Solberg, you tower above the competing beasts like a giraffe in a circus parade, except for the 40 foot whooping crane.
Er… why would the time conversion be counter intuitive? Folks in Alaska saw the beginning of something near the beginning of their day, folks in Israel saw the end of something near the end of theirs.
Err… I don’t suppose I can convince you to celebrate Festivus on the 23rd…?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8g4Ztf7hIM
@Lakakalo - Ok, not precisely ‘counter-intuitive’ in the precise rigid definition. I used a vogue term loosely. (So jealous of your ring-side seat, by the way, hope you had a chance to gawk.) See, when ya get olde, it’s more confusing, like, after going ‘west’ to arrive in Alaska, I then need to ‘come home, then travel ‘east’ to the Land of the Tiger. (Unless it’s cheaper trans-pacific.) You are + 7 1/2(!) right?
love love love “self-styled Prime Meridian.” That’s good stuff! Those Greenwich people think they’re soooooooo important.
@jsolberg - Pretty close. +6:00
When one sets something down on the counter sometimes it simply disappears.
@ordinarybutloud - yeah, ‘the Sun never sets on the Empire’ and all that rot. Still, you have to choose *some* place for the Zero, and they agreed to pay for the quaint telescope and honour-guard. just a friendly jibe.
@an_OM_aly - But when you set it down in words on Xanga, it’s forever. At least in Google cache.
I’ll bet you caught a bit of the eclipse, weather permitting?
Nobody told me about this eclipse until the Alaskans were hogging it. I blame Obama.
So let me get this straight: by the time JFK was killed in Dallas, he’d already been dead for seven hours in Israel? You could at least have sent a telegram to warn the guy.
@Roadkill_Spatula - Bingo!! Yes, that’s exactly the Gordian brain-worms who wreak cognitive havoc in my little cerebrum. It’s a daily challenge to separate ‘clock-events’ from ‘universal-time’ facts.
(Not to mention that D.H.Suzuki, the macrobiotic guru, famously opined that if Jack Kennedy had been eating brown rice, and chewing the requisite 37 times/ per/ bite, he would have ducked.
Anyway, Tim, according to my astute prosthesis, in TX you didn’t miss much…
Neat post.
You aren’t the only one who gets confused. In the prehistoric days when I was still working, I was CEO of a company that was the wholly owned subsidiary of a company in the UK. We lived in New Jersey and one morning, my wife was awakened by the telephone. She groggly answered it and a secretary said “Is David Home?” “No” my wife said, “He’s at work.” “When do you expect him home?” “He just left.” “Oh, I guessed I went the wrong way on the time difference!”
@DEISENBERG - A relief to hear your cute story, and know I’m not alone. If the folks at Greenwich can screw it up, it’s afree pass for Johnny-on-Meade.
And I only recently realized why we see different constellations throughout the year. We’re looking ‘away’ from the Sun (at night, duh) out into the universe, and in an ever-changing direction. A gute tag/ nacht/ ich vays? tzu dir, David.
@memememe321 - Glad you liked it. A good example of writing something just to help myself get some facts straight. Enjoyment is a plus.
I tried to follow this and got lost. But it all reminded me of a high school situation I went through. Two buildings. The new building was several blocks from the old building. One was on a Tuesday schedule and the other was on a Wednesday schedule. If you had to go from one to the other during the day, that could get confusing, and it was propounded that the main thoroughfare separating the two buildings was the actual international dateline.
@twoberry - OMG that is ‘orders of magnitude’ confusing-er than simple celestial mechanics. Someone should have paid-off the authorities to ‘gerrymander’ the border. Great story. Here we have a different date for transitioning to and from daylight-savings every year. It is determined by the number of religious nuts in or out of the ruling parliament coalition.
Loved the moonlings wearing welding goggles. Hate to think of them going blind.
Also, where do we get off calling it the “dark side of the moon” when it gets more direct sunlight than the side that faces earth.
What up?
@gnostic1 - ”So what’s up with that?” is a perfect conversation starter. it was bright outside during the Dark Ages too, what with the snows of the Little Ice Age. Anthro-po-centrism explains nearly everything, except what happens to socks in the dryer.
As to head-gear, every damn time I think of something half-clever I think of you. WWGT. Wat Will Gnostic Think? Might as well mention that, before the sun and the moon blink out, and thanks for the sturdy foil.