Livestreaming from the Great American Eclipse
Earth, Moon, and Sun aligned perfectly on August 21, 2017. Anyone who was in one of 14 states, or in some cases in the air, who looked up or out, saw up to two minutes and forty seconds of a black sun. Looking around, it was dark. Solar panels stopped gathering light. The stars were visible.
For those not on the path of totality–stuck with work, limited by funds, scared of traffic, whose travel plans fell apart, whose flights were overbooked. Or for those who want to see the magical moments through a telescopic lens, here is a livestream courtesy of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. On August 21, the Kronos Quartet was at the Exploratorium connected wirelessly to a telescope feed in Casper, Wyoming, which translated photons into a visual pixel, which was translated by a computer into a sound, which the Quartet accompanied.
The moon is constantly moving away from Earth at the rate of about one and a half inches per year, as the sun converts hydrogen to helium and burns larger. One day, far, far away, the Earth, Moon, and Sun will no longer align. Meanwhile, the next total solar eclipse will take place in 2024.