An annular solar eclipse. (Photo credit should read ALEJANDRO PAGNI/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
Asia just experienced an annular solar eclipse—a “ring of fire”—but just before and after seeing a bright circle around the Moon some observers witnessed something much stranger; “shadow snakes” or “shadow bands” on the ground.
According to NASA, shadow bands are thin wavy lines of alternating light and dark that can be seen moving and undulating in parallel on plain-coloured surfaces immediately before and after a total solar eclipse.
Today’s annular solar eclipse was so very nearly a total solar eclipse; at the point of greatest eclipse in northern India a massive 99.4% of the Sun’s disk was covered by the Moon.
Shadow bands are caused by the transparency of the atmosphere and the altitude of the Sun, said Alex Filippenko, an astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. “Earth is a ball with a very thin atmosphere around it, and when the Sun is reasonably low above the horizon its light travels to you through a longer path of the atmosphere,” he said.
“Think about Earth—it’s this huge ball 6,000 kilometers in radius with an atmosphere that’s only 100 kilometers thick,” said Filippenko. The really dense part that atmosphere is only about 10 kilometers thick.
“If you’re looking straight up you’re looking through a very thin part of it, but if you look at a star close to the horizon then your diagonal path goes through much more of the atmosphere,” said Filippenko. This is why stars twinkle most when they’re close to the horizon. “You’re looking through many more turbulent cells, each with a different density and temperature, and therefore a different defractive index—they bend the light differently,” said Filippenko. “Twinkling is when your eye happens to be getting a bunch of rays that happen to be pointing toward your eye, but your neighbor three or four feet away can get a deficit of rays,” said Filippenko. So when you see a star twinkle, someone very close to you will see something different; your experiences are uncorrelated.
Tiny crescent Suns are projected through the leaves of trees and on to the ground during solar … [+] eclipses, as seen here in this photo taken by Welsh eclipse-chasers Lesley Bound during the July 2, 2019 total solar eclipse in Vicuna, Chile.
Lesley Bound
A tiny crescent Sun that’s almost entirely eclipsed is basically the same as a bright star, but rather, a line of bright twinkling stars. “You’ve got a bunch of twinkling line segments instead of a bunch of twinkling points, and the shadow bands that you’re seeing are the bright parts and the dim parts hitting Earth,” said Filippenko.
They’re pretty rare to see even during a total solar eclipse. “They look like the ripples you get on sand as the ocean recedes, moving across the surface,” said Lesley Bound, an eclipse-chaser from Wales. “Last year in Chile was the first time I’d ever seen them—and that was my seventh eclipse.”
Just occasionally, shadow bands do come in waves. Water analogies work really well for explaining the physics behind them. “Look at the bottom of a swimming pool on a sunny day, you’ll see that the ripples on the surface of the water create bright streaks and dark streaks on the bottom of the swimming pool—and they’re rippling around because the surface of the water is in constant motion.”
To see shadow bands you need motion, but also reasonably large coherent cells in the atmosphere. Lots of little cells and the light is averaged out. “If you have several large cells, then they can dominate the behavior of the light reaching your eye, or reaching the part of the ground that you’re looking at, and you can get these coherent bright and dim regions that become really quite striking,” said Filippenko.
Another sight common to all partial solar eclipses ar “the horns” as seen here in this sequence of … [+] photos taken by Welsh eclipse-chaser Lesley Bound at the annular solar eclipse in Qatar on December 26, 2019.
Lesley Bound
Shadow bands are normally seen when the Sun is at a low altitude during an eclipse; when observers are looking through a fairly long stretch of the Earth’s atmosphere. However, the Sun was high for this annular eclipse that just happened. In fact, it was a whopping 83º in the sky near that “greatest eclipse” point in northern India.
So why did observers see shadow bands this time?
“You’re less likely to see shadow bands when the eclipsed Sun is high in the sky, but you can often get fooled—it all depends on what the atmosphere is doing,” said Filippenko. “Get yourself a nice screen—a white bed linen can make a good screen because you’re trying to find something subtle.”
Last summer in Chile, my white sheet was completely overwhelmed by shadow bands, though at 2017’s “Great American Eclipse” in Wyoming I managed to capture a far more subtle display of shadow bands on the front of a white campervan.
The best advice to catch this phenomenon? Grab a white sheet and find out when the next eclipse is.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
