Total Solar Eclipse Explained: Live!

Watching the solar eclipse in Spain

0:00Marquez told me that if I can tell him a fact he's never heard about an eclipse, he'll give me $100 per fact. And then what did you do? Did you look up a bunch of crazy obscures? I looked up facts Marquez did not know about the eclipse. He literally Googled. Bring them on. All right. Did you know?

0:16Yo, what is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another very special bonus episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marquez. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And I'm Ellis. Yeah. I'm Adam. So, audio listeners, this one, I don't usually say this, but I'm going to recommend fully 100% that you switch to the video version because if you are watching that, you can see we're in a totally different location. The Waveform Studio is out in Zaragoza, Spain today. And I say out because we're outside. Literally.

0:46Under the sun. Yeah. We're baking in the heat. 102. But for a very special occasion because we're here to see a total solar eclipse today. Anyway, the eclipse has already started, but the total is going to be happening during this episode, which is very exciting. In about how long? In about, well, there's a little clock in front of you, Ellis. In a little clock. Excuse me. This. Sorry, it's huge. This is the Elio Rufus 9000. This is a custom-built eclipse timer complete with live ambient temperature, live light meter reading, like obscurity percentage reading.

1:18This is the real deal, bro. And I can't read it quite from here, but I think there's probably about 41 minutes till totality, which is very exciting. Thanks to Airbnb for helping make this possible. This is a very different podcast, but I'm so excited. I'm so excited we got to do it. Okay.

What is a solar eclipse

1:35So I just want to jump in real quick to explain, just in case anyone doesn't know, what is a total solar eclipse? Why are we doing this? Why are we here? Why do we want to see it? And as you probably already know, the moon orbits the Earth, and every once in a while, they line up in just the right way where the moon casts a shadow on the Earth. Prove it. You'll see. You'll see. Give me 40 minutes. You'll see. But when that does happen, in that shadow, it creates a pretty phenomenal effect. And in the center of that shadow, a total solar eclipse turns day to night briefly.

2:05I have all sorts of fun facts I want to go through with you guys as we lead up to that. But real quick, why are we in Spain to see this versus New Jersey? It's a really great one. There's a lot of reasons, Andrew. Fantastic question. I'll start with one of our fun facts, which is the width of that shadow is only 50 to 150 miles wide as it passes on planet Earth. And so there's just a very narrow band where you actually get to see the moon block out the sun. And for this particular eclipse, we are right near the end of that band. And this shadow goes from Greenland to Iceland to the edge of Portugal and through Spain.

2:42We thought about many of these other places to possibly shoot this podcast, but we ended up landing here.

Scouting the viewing location in Zaragoza

2:48Maybe we should go over the backstory of how we got here and how we ended up choosing and actually putting this together at this spot. How did this all start? Well, like all great stories, this one begins in Ohio. I knew that's what you were going to say. Like every good story. Yeah. Okay. So this is a complete, a literal, complete coincidence that this happened, right? You might've watched our, uh, our autofocus video about hybrids, right? On the main channel. We went out to a car collector in Ohio to go shoot that. And then I remember seeing a bunch of headlines on Twitter about how, oh, there's going to be this, uh, this total solar eclipse in the continental United States.

3:21If you get the chance to make the road trip to get to the path of totality, you should totally go see it. And I looked it up and unfortunately it was conflict during our, uh, our shoot. But luckily it happened to be exactly where we were shooting. So we went out and we shot that. And when the eclipse happened, we put all our cameras down for most of them and we paused the car shoot and we just watched an unbelievable eclipse happen. And, uh, to me personally, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen.

3:52And so I, you know, we've, several of us now have seen it. You weren't even there. He was in Ohio. I was in Ohio. Just now with us. Well, I would love if by the end of this eclipse, you guys can all weigh in on what you think of it. But yeah, this, this was the, my inspiration to see another one. So. And that was 2024. That was 2024. The last one. And we have clips in Slack of you putting, of footage on of you guys all freaking out, trying to yell like, oh my God, what's happening? Oh, the clickets. Oh my God, I can't hear anything. It was so cool. Yeah. It was so cool. So here we are, uh, for this eclipse.

4:24It has actually already begun. Oh, oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, that's an interruption. Yeah, yeah. That's the, the Elio Rufus 9000 will be interrupting us from time to time. That one is, uh, just to announce that we are about 20% obscuration, obscurity. I don't, I don't know what the actual word is. I do know the word. I should have Googled that before flying all the way to Spain. But, um, yeah. So at 20% obscurity, as I'm sure you know, Marquez, there's no difference. There's no difference. It's not, you can't tell. Yeah. Um, but, uh, can anyone actually read the temperature just so we can take note of, of how much?

4:57Because the temperature will be dropping. Brandon, can you see the temperature over there? Perhaps not to steal your... Yeah. 91. 92. 92. Fahrenheit. 91. 91. 91. Okay. It's begun. Almost as hot as the podcast studio. It's true. Almost. Uh, it is... That's degrees Fahrenheit, by the way. Even though we're in Spain, we're still doing Fahrenheit. Yeah, it's very hot out here. Yeah. Okay, so, so the original plan was, we gotta go, we gotta see this eclipse, but which one of these places do we choose to go see it, right? Because it goes through Greenland, which is really close to, like, the North Pole.

5:28It's super remote. That was already a little bit wild. There's kind of no roads and no plans out there. Then it goes through the west coast of Iceland. That one is interesting. Very tempting. Yeah, I would love to go to Iceland and see a total solar eclipse, um, seeing is the harder part in Iceland. Yeah, we're a little spooked. A little spooked. The weather changes very quickly in Iceland. It can be sunny and then it's cloudy. If you have a weather app, don't even have a weather app. There's no point. Yeah, just look up. Marques will still have a weather app? Yeah. I'll still have the weather app. But it is constantly cloudy out there.

5:58Marques has a weather app for that, okay, somewhere. I have my Doppler predictions. I can see when it's... It is currently, as of this very moment, cloudy and a little bit of rain. In Iceland. So I think we made the right call.

6:14But then we saw that it also went through Spain and a little bit of Portugal. And that sounds fun. So we started this whole long scouting journey. Because as you can see by this video setup, we have this all very well planned. So we've got our tables and our chairs and everything. I'm dead serious. But if we get a behind the scenes of this, we have this wide shot where the eclipse, where the sun sets behind us, will be right in the middle of the frame, which is amazing. Pretty crazy. It's pretty sick. If you want to see, there will be a studio video up by the time this comes out.

6:44So you can see how all of this was shot. This came together in quite the flurry. But there's so many moving parts. We also had to find a place that we could actually shoot this and not be surrounded by other people trying to look at the eclipse. Because it's a pretty common thing to actually go travel, to go see the eclipse and experience it, photograph it, video it. And that's all of Spain right now is people trying to find cool places to shoot this. So we had to find a place that we could get like a low on the horizon view of the sun that would not be filled with people.

7:15So we actually managed to do that. Shout out to Harper. She's also behind this camera over here. And so there's many more, many more factors that we all went through. We had to find a hotel that wasn't already booked because people are traveling here. It was a whole thing. But now we have found this spot and I think we did a pretty good job. What do you guys think of the scenery? Oh my gosh. Are you kidding? I don't know if the exposure will let you see super clearly, but behind us is the most gorgeous valley of vineyards. It's just lush green pastures all the way to the mountains in the back of our scenes. Yeah, you can superimpose this in post.

7:47It's unbelievable. Audio listeners, close your eyes and imagine. Unless you're driving, keep them open. Don't do that. Wash the dishes. Yeah. Turn away from the dishes momentarily to appreciate the scenery. You can imagine that your plate you're washing is the sun and the cup. Yeah. The sponge.

8:06Moving on. So what's cool about this, and I think we're going to try to get a drone up later to really get a good view of it, but what's cool about this is we're elevated a little bit and there are some very distant mountains. I'm going to guess they're like a hundred miles away. I really have no idea how far away they are, but they're pretty far away on the horizon. And there's this huge valley between us and the mountains. And when the shadow finally reaches us, we're going to see that shadow like race across the valley at like a thousand miles an hour. What? And it's going to be a pretty quick sight to see. Okay, that I didn't know. A thousand miles an hour?

8:37By the way, I have looked up a lot of eclipse stacks. Yeah. I am full of them. I was saying earlier, I'm approaching Neil deGrasse Tyson levels of complete coverage of this topic. It's funny. Was that an eclipse pun? Yeah, coverage. Yeah, it's good. Oh my God, he's on it today. For weeks, I've been like, Marquez, how's the doc coming along? He's like, don't worry. I got it. I got a doc. I have a separate doc that I haven't shared with you guys, which has a bunch of trivia questions about eclipses. And if you're down, I would like to be like the sort of interim trivia czar and ask you

9:07guys. These are meaningless points. It doesn't matter. Wait, no, what do we win? I want to win something. You get the eclipse classes if you get one wrong. Oh, God, deal. But I do have a separate doc secretly that you haven't seen full of eclipses. Nice. So at some point, I'll ask you some questions about eclipses.

9:23Okay.

Camera settings and solar filters

9:24One thing that comes up a lot when shooting or when looking at eclipses is people want to take pictures of them, take videos of them. We are actively doing that right now. We have a couple methods that we're using that we'll get into in a second. But I figure since we have David, we should talk a little bit about what it's like to point a camera at the sun or if that's even a good idea. It's a bad idea. Generally, we're kind of doing it because we have solar filters. We have all this kind of stuff. If you have enough NDs, you can stack them. You can make sure that you're not setting your camera on fire. You said a lot of words. I don't know. I think you probably know. Yeah, break it down. What's a solar filter? A solar filter.

9:56Okay. There's a lot of different types of radiation that are coming out of the sun. You know, it's heat. It's gamma radiation. It's all these types of radiation. Solar filter is basically a really, really, really, really strong ND. ND is neutral density. Basically just cuts the amount of light that goes through the filter and reaches the other side. These are effectively solar filters, these little glasses that you would put on. This is what we use to look at it. Fun fact about these eclipses, until it gets to a very, very certain point near the center, the amount of light that's coming at you, like relative to what your eyes are picking up,

10:29is almost the same. So when you look through these glasses and you look at the sun, that eclipse could be half done. And still, if you look at the sun with your bare eyes, which you shouldn't do, especially if you're a human. Bare eyes. Unless you're driving. Unless you're driving. It's still going to be way too bright and you're going to set your brain on fire. Now what a lens is, is basically, it's like a telescope, it's like a microscope. What happens when you raise, you know, a microscope off from the concrete, it sets ants on fire. You don't want to do that to your camera sensor. That's bad. That's really bad. Yeah. So the lens is focusing whatever light comes through onto the sensor.

11:01Yes. Pointing it directly at the sun's probably not the best idea. Probably bad. So that's why we're putting the filters on in front of it. Yeah. I'm pretty proud of our setup over on this side right here. You've got a little close-up camera with a, what is that, a 500 that we're all the way zoomed in on with the solar filter in front of it. 500 to 600 millimeters about the right focal length generally to shoot an eclipse, by the way. If you want to get like the whole corona and everything going on. It's going to be moving through the sky and so we'll adjust that. I'm just proud of this setup. I've looked online for videos of people watching eclipses and yes, there's lots of videos of

11:33this, but I don't know if it's ever been done quite like this. We're going to try to like lock exposure so you can see the light change as we sit here. We're going to try to get close-ups of the sun. We obviously have Ellis's. The Elio Rufus 9000. The Elio Rufus 9000. Trademarked. So it's a whole thing. Yeah. Very exciting. Your camera, if it has autofocus, do not use the autofocus to take a picture of the sun. It's really bad at tracking the sun. It's essentially infinity. It's infinity, effectively. And your camera is not good at focusing at infinity. It uses like contrast and things like that to focus.

12:03So set it to manual. Go all the way. Use it between F8 and F11. That's where the lens is the sharpest. Nice. You really got to, you know, hone in right there. Would all this also apply to film?

12:17The film thing is weird because you don't want to be taking pictures of the sun at all until the actual total solar eclipse is happening. That is mostly true. However, you're metering for middle gray, which means everything is going to be a little bit of like a mid-tone. If you want to be able to bring out those highlights, you want to overexpose by a little bit. But the cooler photos when you're taking a photo of an eclipse, a lot of people will just zoom in, zoom in all the way and just get the eclipse happening. That's cool. In my opinion, way cooler photos is to get environmental photos. Your friends, your family, context, some very cool photos from Mexico of an eclipse happening.

12:52And there's like crazy birds flying around because animals famously freak the hell out when the eclipse happens because it gets really cold really quickly. You can actually feel it getting colder already. Yeah. The crickets going off, I think, was my favorite thing that happened in 2024. Just like, it's night. Yeah. It went from suddenly daytime to suddenly nighttime and all the animals behaved in weird ways. I slept through my alarm. I did see a cricket earlier, so I'm kind of hoping we get some of this. We'll see. Confirmed, they're here. So another fun fact about eclipses is, well, we know enough about the solar system and the

13:25celestial bodies in it that they're predictable. Like, we know when they're going to happen and where. And for the next thousand years, we know all the eclipses that are going to happen and when they're going to happen and where in the sky they'll happen. And we knew that this one was going to be low in the sky. And at first, that concerned me a little bit. I thought, oh, it's not going to be really that bright when it turns to night, so maybe it'll be less dramatic. And the one we experienced in Ohio was the middle of the day. It was overhead and it went to nighttime and that was crazy. But from what I understand, because this one is right at the very end of the eclipse,

13:56the shadow is really elongated and will sweep in really fast and it'll get darker faster. Oh, no. And so I'm looking forward to seeing that. That's going to be faster than the last one. Because the last one felt like a light switch. The last one, and I have videos of this because our memories are cruel. They sometimes confuse us. I thought it was like a 10-minute eclipse. I'm an elephant over here, baby. I went back and watched my video of it. And it's about the last two minutes that it started to really rapidly get darker. Yeah, two minutes of getting dark, which is still very fast. I retract the elephant comment.

14:27But I'm excited to see that be a little bit different. Plus the different colors of it being Spain and having, you know, this little sunlight light that we're having. It'll be cool. I just looked at the sun again. Yeah, don't. Stop looking at the sun. It's so tempting. Perceived brightness and luminance is also logarithmic. It's going to be like we can see, we can see, we can see, we can see. And then instantly just boom, when it gets to the center. And why is it logarithmic, David? I don't know. It's your favorite thing. It's the inverse square law. Oh, yeah, inverse square law. Yeah, that's true. The further away a light source is, I know, it is my favorite thing.

14:57It's fine. So there's a trivia question I'd like to ask you guys. Oh, God. Okay. All right. So there's a very special reason why a total solar eclipse is possible and why it looks the way it does. There's a term, actually, that I want to just jump in and make sure we have here called magnitude. And when the magnitude of the sun and the magnitude of the moon are equal, essentially when they're at the exact same size in the sky and they overlap each other, coverage, magnitude is 1, 1.0.

15:27And so a perfect 1.0 is a total solar eclipse, right? Does anyone know why that's possible? Why that happens exactly perfectly in the sky? Magic? Magic. Coincidence? I'm going to play. We don't have a speaker out, but in post, I'm going to add the trivia waiting music. Nice. Nobody knows? Why does it happen? Yeah, why is it possible? Because lots of other planets have moons. But if you watch a solar eclipse on Mars with its moon Europa, you just see a chunk floating in front of the sun, and it doesn't fully eclipse the sun.

15:58It doesn't cover the sun. Magnitude never reaches 1. But on Earth, for some reason, we have this perfect 1-to-1. It's not just like luck? It's not just like 4.0. It is luck. Oh. I guess that's a fair answer. But the answer is because it appears, so the moon is, what, 250,000 miles away, something like that? I wouldn't know. How many kilometers are that? 250,000 miles away. Yeah. So the sun is 400 times further away, but it's 400 times bigger. Whoa. Oh.

16:28So because of that perfect ratio, they appear the same size of the sky. So that's how we get the 1. Yeah. So it really is just a random stroke of luck. It's just a random stroke of luck. That's crazy. Mark, because yesterday you asked me my favorite moon fact. Is that your favorite moon fact? It might be, honestly. So the one, you want to say the one that you said? I said my favorite moon fact is what I assume is also based on luck, that the moon rotates at about the same rate it revolves so that we always see the same. The same part. I just think, I think that's very beautiful and poetic, but I don't know if that's because

16:59of some law of the universe or if, again, it's just kind of based. Pure chance, which is pretty crazy. So some things just spin in the sky is what you're saying. What? Well, one revolution of the moon, since it revolves, is the same length as one orbit, so it always faces us perfectly. Are there other moons that are turning for other planets? The moon is hitting a perfect parallax all the time. Exactly. All the time. The moon, best camera person, confirmed. Yeah. The moon is actually just hitting trick shots all day and night.

Sponsor message from Airbnb

17:30Anyway. Okay. Quick break. This bonus episode is done in partnership with Airbnb, so shout out to them. You don't need an eclipse to go to Spain. The travel is a lot of the joy that we get to experience in the first place. And it should be immersive. It's not just about the tourist landmarks. It's about getting to know the people and the culture and seeing the world through fresh eyes. And so Airbnb is really the perfect way to do that. I've used Airbnb to book a lot of stays in the past.

18:03I've been lucky enough to travel all over the world for Ultimate Frisbee, as you guys have probably noticed by now. And I'm going directly to the World Club Championships after this in Ireland. And of course, my team booked a really nice place to stay with Airbnb. The last time we had a World Championships four years ago, we also booked a place to stay with Airbnb. Airbnb, and it was awesome, and we won. So we can't rule out Airbnb being Parsley responsible. Can't rule it out. Nope. Can't rule it out. So thanks to Airbnb. When you explore new cultures and meet new people, you discover new things about yourself,

18:35and Airbnb is the best way to book the perfect stay for your next adventure. So shout out to them for sponsoring this episode. Shout out to Marquez for that one take. Wow, one take. That was crazy. We couldn't screw it up because of the clock. Yeah. This is all real time. This is real time. Real time. Yeah. I was waiting for you to screw up so that I could be like, everyone always asks what we do in ad breaks, and you didn't screw up. Now we're cooking.

Sharing obscure eclipse trivia and facts

18:54Marquez told me that if I can tell him a fact he's never heard about an eclipse, he'll give me $100 per fact. And then what did you do? Did you look up a bunch of crazy obscures up? I looked up facts Marquez did not know about the eclipse. He literally Googled it. Bring them on. All right. Did you know? Did I know? That helium. Let me try to see if I know before you reveal the whole fact. Word per word. Word per word. Did you know that helium? Uh-huh. Do you know it yet? It's one of the gases in the corona? Mm-hmm. Keep going. Is the only element we didn't discover on Earth.

19:24Oh? Helium is the only element we didn't discover on Earth. But rather than we discovered on the sun, no? Wait, you mean that like balloons predate, like are after space travel in the tech tree? That's exactly what I'm saying. You're saying that the periodic table had no helium on it, and that was the first element, maybe the only element, that was discovered by looking out into the sun and stars. In 1968, during an eclipse in India, they saw a band of color that they didn't know what it was. Wait, who banned it?

19:56Oh, they banned the color, yeah. I can't see it. They saw a band of color. Yeah, sorry. And just like in our episode about how the JWST, James Webb Space Telescope sees into the past, they used that to pinpoint the exact element that was happening, and they didn't know what it was. And they named it Helios, Helium, Helios, after the sun. That's why it's called Helium, and that's how they discovered it. Do you know how I know you get the hundred bucks? Because Marcus went, oh. Yeah.

20:26You don't say that when you know it already. Can I get a chance at a hundred bucks? That's good. I don't know if that's an eclipse. I guess it's an eclipse fact. It was during an eclipse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's fair. I'll give you that. I'll give you that. They saw it around the corona. What year did you say? 1868.

20:40But the James Webb Space Telescope? No, no, no, no. Just like during our JWST episode where they used the elements. Yeah, they discover it. Whatever. You just listen to it. Yeah, yeah. Listen to the episode. That's a good one. That's a good one. I did not know that. Wow. A hundred bucks. A hundred bucks. There it is. I have another one. You want to go back to back? You can go for back to back. You want me to go back to back? Now Marquez is another fun fact. Now, if you didn't know this one, you owe Marquez a hundred bucks. No, no, no, no, no. Just double or nothing.

21:07I'm trying to remember it. I have to open my laptop. Can I throw one out there? Yeah. Which Marquez knows because he read this. So a listener of the show, Tom, is an astronomer and sent us a bunch of facts. Asked him to get as obscure as possible. And the way I know Marquez research much is he was like- Obscure. I've read- Another eclipse fun. Nice. I was working on that. But there was one where he knew a little bit about it. But so in 2024, amateur astronomers discovered a comet during the eclipse. Oh, sorry. That one's not really anything either. It's just 50% obscurity.

21:37Oh, okay. I can tell. Yeah, I was looking at it. Which was then, so Marquez knew about the comet during the eclipse, but it was then destroyed the next day during its closest approach to the sun. Yeah. But something also similar happened in 1882 in Egypt where they saw a comet and then never saw it again. Wow. That's crazy. That's crazy. That's wild. Okay. I remembered mine. Okay. So maybe this one doesn't count, but the other one did for sure. All right. So the Spanish are preparing for a really intense hit to their power grid because five megawatts of energy is going to drop between the 90 seconds that the eclipse is happening, which

22:11is 13% of their total grid capacity during that time. Yeah. We passed a lot of solar panels. I was noticing that. A lot of solar. 13% of the total energy they are receiving at any given time is just going to disappear. And so they are like a little bit worried that people might lose power and they need to make sure that like all of the stored energy actually can get pushed through the grid. That is a fun fact. 13%. Wait, did you know that? I did not know that. That's a hundred bucks. I did not know that. I'm telling you. That's good. That's really good. I'm telling you. We got fun facts. Yeah. Marquez, your turn.

22:41I can see it slowly starting to get slightly dimmer. I don't know if you guys are feeling that too. The shadows are a tiny. The sun is officially half covered. Yeah. And it feels a little different. Yeah. But it's not like dramatic yet. Yeah. Just a little. Oh, I looked direct. Don't do what I did. Okay. Let me see if I have another fun. Oh, yeah. Okay. So eclipses are very predictable, as you know. You look so excited to tell us this. So we can look forward on the calendar and just decide.

23:14Like you guys have probably already heard about the next major eclipse, which is Egypt in 2028 or 2027. Yeah. Which has a famously six and a half minute totality. Crazy. Which is insane. The one that we are going to witness when we reach a 1.0 magnitude is about 90 seconds long, which is still crazy. 90 seconds of no sun in the sky is still crazy. But six and a half minutes is historically long. That's long. Do you guys know the longest total solar eclipse that is theoretically possible on planet Earth?

23:47Seven minutes and 28 seconds. I feel like you spoiled us at dinner last night. I think you did. But I can't remember correctly. Seven minute 29 seconds. Were you paying attention? To Marquez talking at dinner? I thought it was closer to eight. No, it was seven. We don't have whiteboards, but you can all just- Yeah, I'm saying 729. It was like 728 or something. I'm going to put in the sixes. I'm going to go say 645. Taking the over.

24:08Yeah, David nailed it. It's just short of seven and a half minutes. I knew David was paying attention because he wanted a hundred bucks. It's the longest theoretical eclipse possible. So that one next year, not that I have plans to go, but if anybody's going to be in northern Egypt or northern Africa in 2027, you're in for a treat, my friends. Six minutes. So long. It's so long. You have to go. How far did we travel for the 92nd eclipse? For this? We brought nine people who traveled an eight-hour flight. A three-hour car ride closer to like 10 hours for some of us.

24:39This is funny. My golden rule, actually, maybe you have this rule too. I have a golden rule whenever I'm playing Frisbee for like pickup or any random stuff. I don't like to drive for longer than I'm going to play. So if it's like an hour long of pickup, I won't drive more than an hour to go. We totally broke that rule for us. We are witnessing a 92nd event that we traveled days for. Yeah, but we're potting for eight hours. True. And this is an elite, amazing podcast. Wait, Andrew, you said for some of us, the drive was more than three hours. We got a flat tire on the way.

25:10That's true. Full story on Studio Channel. But at least you got a flat tire in like a super fun populated area full of stuff to do, right? Listen, I'm going to say truck stop, but compared to truck stops like in Kearney, it was a pretty sweet truck stop. And there was an adorable dog that kind of looked like Mac. So if I'm going to sit behind at a truck stop, I'm going to do it with a dog that looks like my old one. Very cute. That's pretty fun. Working on pixel content in the Spanish sun. I have a bunch of sweet pictures of David working on a bunch of articles in random spots along the side of the highway.

25:41Yeah. Nice. All right. I have another random trivia question for you guys. Hit it to us. So David has one point. I don't know if we're keeping track. One. I thought it was two. One point and $200. Oh, yeah. Well, that's separate. All right. So officially, this is the second solar eclipse that some of us have seen, which we traveled and went specifically out here to see this one. Wow. It's getting a little darker. Yeah. You can tell it's getting. There is a term. 61% obscurity. And we've dropped about 4,000 lux rightness already.

26:11It's chilly, too. I feel like it's not high. Yeah, it's getting colder for sure. Nice and chilly. What's the temperature? 88. 88. 88. It feels like 78. That's crazy. Sweet. There is a term specifically, a Google, a dictionary defined term for people who go and travel and go see eclipses specifically. Do you know what this word is? Eclipse chaser. Wait. An eclipse chaser. Yeah, buddy. I knew this one. You know the word? Oh, it's an actual word for eclipse chaser? It is a word for eclipse chaser. Oh, damn it. Wait. Is it like a portmanteau or is it like two words combined or is it just one word?

26:44It is one word. Solarphile? Damn. I was going to say heliophile. Is it just astronomer? Lover of the sun. Yeah. You guys are on the right track. I don't want to give it away, but that's not a bad guess. Is it a solarometer?

26:58I'll keep giving you hints until you get it. On a scale of one to ten, how silly is it? It's like a five. It's kind of silly. Oh, so it's mid-whimsy. Mid-whimsy. Is it a coverage enthusiast? You're close. You're so- No. Solar enthusiast. Combine what you just said with what you said earlier. The file or the- Yeah. Solarphile? Is it a coverphile? Coveragephile? You're close now. You're close now. It's a- It's a Latin root. Oh. Coverphile. You're so close. What's the Latin root? If you don't know it now, it's good. Overphile. That's fine.

27:29Hit me. An umberphile. Oh. The Latin word for shadow is someone who chases, eclipses, and travels for them. That is an umberphile. So we're all umberphiles. I'm going to go look at the sun. Apparently, yeah. If you haven't looked recently, it's like crescent moon right now. Holy moly. Holy moly. That is a full crescent sun. We can get in there. Wow. That is so cool. We might be close to the podcast where none of us are looking at the camera anymore. Marquez, is this what you'd call a waxing gibbous sun? This is waning, but yes. Yes, it is a waning crescent. The opposite of what you said, actually.

27:59But it's pretty cool. Give us the sun. Oh, I looked at it, and it didn't hurt. Yeah, it did. Exactly. It did hurt for a second. It was a quick glance. Don't do it. Don't do that. Don't do that. So we're getting close. Yeah. I think you'll have to excuse me. I'm going to try and put the drone up. We're going to do it. Yes. It's happening. We're getting close. Good luck. So I will just. While you do that, can I talk a little bit? I'm going to start getting it ready again. What's the time left? So we're about 14 and a half minutes from Totality. That's crazy. Yeah. From Totality.

28:30It's crazy how interesting the light is getting right now. Yeah.

Using pinhole cameras and observing the light

28:33This looks beautiful. Do you think if we held up like a, you see that hat Harper has right there? Yeah. Can you bring that hat over here? So what I see a lot of people doing, when the sun gets really, really small, it's like a point light in the sky and people will bring literally like a colander, like a strainer or whatever. Yeah. And when you do and you hold it up to the light, the shadows are like crescent shaped. This is because it's like a pinhole camera. Exactly. So this is a bunch of pinhole cameras. I am seeing the thing where depending on the angle you hold stuff at, your shadows get softer and sharper. And this specific eclipse, the shadows go horizontally.

29:07So you're going to have to have some sort of surface to shine it onto. Thank you, Harper. This is bringing a crate over there. This is a total coincidence that we have this crate, but it's got these slots in it. Crate coincidence. Oh, that's so weird. Wait, take a video. Look at these. You can kind of see it. You can kind of see it. Yeah. It'll get more interesting. Okay. As we go, a pinhole camera is basically any small, tiny, tiny little hole that inverts the light that's coming through that hole. The more circular, the smaller. Oh, there it is. Look at that. Look at that. You can, uh, you can basically make a pinhole camera out of anything.

29:37And the reason it gets really interesting is because the light source is the sun, which has a mask on it now. And because it has a mask, all of the little droplets are going to have little shapes. So you ready for this? I'm ready. See the bottom? See the holes in this? See the circle in the middle? I see. Oh, there's a circle. We got a circle. Whoa. Where is it? That ain't no circle. It's a crescent. Oh, I see it. There's a singular circle. Yeah. It's a crescent circle. It's supposed to be a circle. I don't know if you're going to be able to catch that. No, camera. Adam's pointing his camera at it. We'll cut it in if it looks any good. Yeah. If not, sorry. We'll just bump the contrast up to 1,000.

30:091,000. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just put a Michael graphic. How quickly can he turn these around? Yeah. Yeah. That is pretty awesome. Yeah. All right. I did mention the width of the path of totality earlier. So I guess that's off the table for points. Yes. It's only 150 miles or so to really be in the path of totality. And we're in that 150 miles. Yeah. That's the path of like how wide it is for you to be in the center of the shadow where a magnitude is one and you get a total solar eclipse. Of the heart. Of the heart. A 99% solar eclipse will look like this. It will look like it's daytime. Yeah. It won't get nearly as dark.

30:39So I'm very excited for the dramatic. Yeah. I remember last time when you guys were in Ohio, I remember going to the beach that day to try to get a better look at it. And you couldn't tell. Because you had a partial. Yeah. Unless you had the glasses. Yeah. With the glasses and you looked at it, then you can see a little bit of the obscurity. But yeah. Other than that. That's crazy. All right. Here's a crazy fact. Let's go. There's zero shot you'll ever get it. So I won't even try to ask. I'm just going to tell you the fact. Okay. The next Halloween total solar eclipse. What? 2692. That's a while. Oh, wow. I'm going to go to that. The last New Year's Day total solar eclipse.

31:11The last one. Was 1889. Oh. That's actually pretty recent. That's around for that one. When's the next one? Which holiday can you never get a total solar eclipse? Think of tomorrow. Leap year day. Holiday. The leap year. My birthday. Holiday. Christmas? Do you know that for sure? Is it Christmas? I'm pretty sure. Cinco de Mayo. I said that already. Oh, damn. Holiday. July 4th. No. In Spain. Oh, that is, sorry. That's a call for our temperature check, which I guess we sort of already did. But Rufus, I can't, can you, can you yell at me?

31:4187.9. 87.9. So we dropped to 0.1 degrees. It feels a lot cooler though. Yeah. It's getting breezy. That's fine. The droplets on my back are not falling as often now. We're at 656 lux. All right. 656. Whoa. The line on the graph is dramatic. Yeah. We have a recording, a graph that just is watching. We probably should have screen recorded that computer when we started, but you know, whatever. But we started about 7,000 lux of light. So we've dropped so much. It is so crazy. You still can't stare at the sun, but it's almost completely covered.

32:14Oh, it got way dark. Yeah, it got way dark. Whoa, it's getting dark fast. Which is cool. Back to your question. I'm going to say Valentine's Day. No. Damn. Slight isn't. Is it a holiday in the United States? Yes. Is it the 4th of July? It is not. Did we say, you said Thanksgiving? Is it Christmas? I said Christmas. It is not. I didn't say Thanksgiving. New Year's Eve. No. Easter. Yes. Easter. Wait, why? Because of the way Easter is drawn into the calendar, it's always a specific set of dates relative to the full moon.

32:45Relative. Yeah. And by definition, a total solar eclipse can only happen during a new moon, which is about four weeks after. And Easter is typically two weeks after the first full moon of the month. So you can never have a total solar eclipse on Easter. That's crazy. It's wild, right? Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Anyway, okay. It is cooking now. Oh, my God. The light is getting so good. Yeah. Looking across the fields is insane. Don't look at it. Oh, yeah. The shadows are pin sharp. Yeah. Pin sharp right now. The drone is up.

33:16The drone is up. The film camera. You don't even need the glasses? You're doing this no-scope in it? Andrew's just free-soloing the drone right now. The drone is up. While Andrew gets that drone in the sky, I just want to say, while I have 30 seconds, Rufus devised a genius way to measure the light out here with this little clip with a piece of sort of diffused soft white plastic. Yeah. So we're actually using the iPad's camera looking at that piece of white to deduce how bright it is outside. Is it the front-facing camera? Yes, it is the front-facing camera.

33:46I think it would be more dramatic if we were- Looking the other way? Facing the sun. Well, we're going for ambient light. So if it was facing the light, the camera would just be looking right at the sun and it would blast. That's an incident meter over there. It is literally an incident meter and we've been checking with an incident meter and it is just so accurate. It's crazy. Rufus absolutely- No, not spot on. That would be spot meter. Yeah. Incident on. Interesting. Incident on. So shout out Rufus and his genius technological skills. He was like, what if we just get clip, put clip on iPad? And we were like, okay.

34:17This is so cool. This is interesting. It says, I currently have weak satellite signal and I can't go more than 10 meters. So is there a potential that that's because of what is happening right now? Satellites shouldn't be affected. I think it's- Why does a satellite need to talk to the drone? Sorry. I think it should be fine. Yeah. Reasons. Oh, there's a bird. Oh, the birds are leaving. Oh, they're freaking out. They're so upset. Oh, there's only two. It's fine. They're going crazy. They're just having a good sleep. This is so- Fun fact, there's only two birds in Spain. The light is so wild. And there they are. The light is so wild. We got them. Yeah.

34:47We're entering the last couple of minutes where we're just going to be looking around and gawking at what's happening. And hopefully video viewers, hopefully if you're an audio listener, you've switched to the video version so you can really feel what's going on with us. We're about to hit eight minutes. Yeah. Eight minutes. The light turns metallic. Now, I read this in the description that the light turns metallic. I'm not sure what metallic means, but the light feels really different. I think I can actually explain this one. Yes, please do. I believe it is something called the Purkinje effect. Okay. And the reason the Purkinje effect is that our eyes...

35:20Wow. Okay. You doing great, sweetie. I reread this so many times and I know I'm going to get it like slightly off, but our eyes deduce brightness from reds much more than blues. And so as the sun begins to go away, our eyes use fewer cones which see color and more rods which see luminosity. So we become way less sensitive to red light, which is a lot of what's around us. And that's also why faces sort of look monochrome-y during an eclipse.

35:55Yeah. Certainly. I don't know. I can't see the camera feed, but I bet we look really different than we did. Do you think mantis shrimp freak out during the eclipse? Wait, why? Because they can see like nine times the amount of colors that humans can. Oh, really? Was that a shrimp fact during the eclipse? Wow. Whoa.

36:11Where's Mariah? Yeah, many of them are above ground. Mantis shrimp. Which can also punch the speed of a bullet. Whoa. Whoa. We can't have two shots.

36:20I'll do the fun facts around here. Let's relax. Yeah. I think that green light is half... Your eyes are half as sensitive to green light because that's why there's two green pixels for every red and blue on a display. The vibe's getting weird. The vibe is getting weird. It's kind of feeling like an accelerated sunset right now. The wind is picking up. It's like if you put a sunset on like 2x speed. Yeah. Like 5x speed. It feels like a photo filter on. This is crazy. This is... The dynamic range of the environment is very low right now.

36:52This is... Yes. I'm going to take some photos of you guys. I'm going to take a photo of this. It's not going to show up. Yeah, no, good luck. It's crazy. Do you have any other fun facts? I do have one more. I knew it. One more? This is maybe the... I don't know if I say this is a fun fact or just a strange fact. So, first of all, this is sort of blended. There are several different types of eclipses. There's lunar eclipses, as you know. There's this, which is a total solar eclipse. There's also partial solar eclipses. There's also something else called an annular eclipse.

37:22Does anybody know what that is? Every year. It's when the moon blocks the year. Oh. Not annual, annular. Isn't it like... It has to do with another eclipse, correct? No. Does the eclipse eclipse the eclipse? Is it like yo annulo to annulas? I'm in Spain for three days. Because we're in Spain? Oh, the shadows are getting long. Nice. I'll just... Okay. An annular eclipse. So, as you probably know, the moon orbits the Earth. Sometimes the moon is a little bit further away from Earth.

37:55And so, when it does line up perfectly and cast a shadow on Earth at its maximum furthest distance from the Earth, it's actually not big enough in the sky anymore to fully cover the sun. And so, it will do the alignment in the sky, but the magnitude never reaches one. And you see some of the outside of the sun as well as the corona. And it's called a ring of fire. Oh, that's great. It's a very special, very different looking eclipse in the sky. And that one you still probably can't look at, question mark? I think you probably want to play it safe and not look at it because it's not a total slower eclipse. You're seeing some of the sun. The default answer should be don't look at sun. Yeah, that's fair.

38:25But very, very interesting phenomenon that leads to my final fun fact, which is that the moon is moving away from the Earth very slowly at a rate of about one inch per year. Wait, so there's a future where it just like spins away? Yes. Which means we die. That means there won't be solar eclipses forever. Which means there's a finite number of solar eclipses. Wait, so there will be a last total solar eclipse? Will we be here for that? We're potting. We will not be there for the last. It is so much darker. Yeah, it got real dark. I mean, especially when you take the glasses off.

38:57Yeah. So, the question is how long till the last total solar eclipse? Is it before or after? You can just random, totally random guess. Please be more than like 500 years. I mean, you're going to be dead. It's fine. Any guess? 10,000 years. 10,000 years? I'm going to go with 1 million. 1 million years? 1 million years. Okay, wait. Let's just say 10 million. I can do some napkin math. You said it moves away at one inch, and I know the ratio is 400 to 400, right? And that's miles? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's not 400 miles, but so-

39:28400 times, 25,000 miles. How many inches are in a mile? One Somerville. 250,000. That's 5,000 times 12, so that's like 60,000 inches. So, I'm going to guess, I've lost track of the math. I give up. It's about half a billion years. Oh, swag. So, I win. So, we're good. It's almost completely covered. We're good. It's almost completely covered, guys. Oh, it's happening. It's like, you know what's crazy? Three minutes left to a totality. Yeah, this isn't even totality yet. If you look through the glasses right now, it's almost completely covered, but outside, it's still pretty bright. What does the magnitude look like? It's like 90% coverage, I think.

39:59It's probably 98. I have that answer. That's got to be. 97. 97. Wow. Yeah. My coverage estimate is 94, but it's just an estimate. It's a sliver in the sky right now. Oh, here's something that I remember last time that happened. That automatic light just turned on. Oh, yeah. Because it's getting dark enough that the lights are starting to think. All the sunset. Oh, it's getting so dark. All the sunset stuff. Or I guess there hasn't been a K. If you're driving a car, your headlights just turned on. Like, all the sunset stuff is happening right now. I think I heard my first cricket also. Starting to get. That was me.

40:30Starting to get cold. The birds have gone quiet. Yeah, it's a silo. The two Spanish birds. The light is dropping.

Totality and the shadow sweeping across the valley

40:38It's getting so crazy right now. And we're closing in on that last phenomenon, which we're going to be able to see, which is the shadows racing through this valley. In about a minute, they're going to start really accelerating and coming towards us for that last 1% to get to totality. Do you think we're going to be able to, like, see it coming? Or is it going to be, like, blink and now we're covered fast? That's a great question. I have no idea. I'm really excited to find out. We're, like, up a little bit. Yeah, we're, like, elevated. Yeah, we're, like, elevated over the valley, which I'm excited to see what that means. Because last time we were in the middle of a field in Ohio at the same level as all the other grounds.

41:09So I can see lights turning on. Oh, it's getting darker. I can visibly see it getting darker. Wait, still don't look at the sun, guys. Yeah, don't look directly at the sun, but look all around it. The Elio Rufus 9000 will alarm for when we need to put our glasses back on. Okay. Right at the end of totality. Yes. When it pokes out the other side. That's a great. When you hear the auga, it's time to be safe. Guys, it's getting so dark. It's getting so dark. 90 seconds till full coverage. Oh, look at the birds. They're freaking out.

41:40The birds are flying away. It is getting dark fast. Oh, my gosh. It's getting so dark so fast. Oh, my gosh. Wow. We got a perfect day, guys. No clouds. This is insane. No obscurity. This is perfect day because my four friends are here. We're here with buddies. Yeah, screw the rest of you guys. Sorry.

41:59Continuity, man. I'm building the scene. Only the people who can see. Sorry, Harper was on camera. Okay, imagine. And I didn't know if I can see it on camera. So my six friends are here. Wait, I can see the eclipse. There's less. Sorry, Brandon. Brandon, come on, Cam. Then it's continuity. Oh, my gosh. It's getting so dark. Less than a minute. My seven friends are here. Sorry. Everyone's just watching us freak out because we have like 30 seconds left. 45 seconds. How am I supposed to have my mic and take photos? Oh, my gosh. So the last 30 seconds, shadow bands rippling. I haven't seen shadow bands yet.

42:30It's getting really dark. I'm not seeing shadow bands, but wow, there's a lot more shadows. All right. 30 seconds, folks. 30 seconds. It's so dark. It's so dark. It's the slimmest sliver of a pinpoint of a sun in the sky you can imagine. Marquette, where are your glasses? 20 seconds. I'm not looking at the sun. Okay. But it got dark really fast. That was incredible. That's... Wow. We're almost there. We're almost there. Oh, guys, it's happening. It's happening right now. It's happening. Look at it. You can see. You can look at it now. Can you look? No, you can't. I'm waiting. I mean, I'm looking. What is this? Oh, it's so crazy. Whoa, it's dark. There's a shadow. There's a shadow. There's a shadow.

43:02It looks like a ring right now. It wiped across the sky from right to left. Holy shit. From right to left. Oh, my God. So the right side across the left, and there it is. And that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. That? Wow. This is way cooler than last time. I think the sun is more down. That's so freaking cool. That's so cool. Enjoy the next 90 seconds. No, you're good. You're good. Video viewers hopefully are getting this crazy shot that Brandon has made. Look at the kind of flare off to the left side. Everyone looking at the total solar eclipse. It sees it?

43:32Oh, my God. I can't wait to see that. So what you're seeing is Bailey's beads. So there are craters on the moon that slivers of the sun are actually peeking through. So you can still see a bit. So the glow around the moon is the corona, and then the little Bailey's beads, and the little birds flying around, too. Marquez, you did prove it. I did ask earlier to prove it. I don't hear any crickets, but I do see one very lucky pilot getting an airborne view of this insane flying apocalypse. This is so crazy, guys. It's nighttime. I remember it being the coolest thing I've ever seen.

44:03Oh, wait. Sorry. I want to acknowledge. The horizon is bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, dark by the sun. Bright, bright, bright, bright, bright. So to the right, you can see the end of the shadow. Oh, and there's a crazy cloud over there. I don't know what that's related to. We couldn't see during the daytime. It'll go away again when the sun comes out. Like, the sky has a shadow on it. Yeah. It's crazy that you can see it moving from right to left. And you can see the coronas blowing up on the edge. On the left edge, there's a big solar flare. Oh, my God. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my God. It's so beautiful. I mean, maybe because it's closer, you know, the sun seems brighter than last time we did it.

44:36Maybe because we're in Spain and not Ohio. Oh, glasses on. Glasses on, folks. Oh, glasses on. Oh, wow. Wow, that's so fast.

Daylight returns and crew thank yous

44:46It's 9000. It did it. Nicely done, Rufus. Wow. And now everything's going to work. The Elio part comes first, you know.

44:54And the drone, luckily I checked again because it stopped recording at one point, but now it recorded through that whole part. And it is getting lighter again almost immediately. It's like sunrise. Oh, my gosh. Holy crap. That was so cool. Nice little sunrise from right to left for you. That is so crazy. So what I noticed already immediately, remember the super high overhead one we saw? We had a 360 degree sunset. Yes. That one was far more directionally right to left, which is cool that we got to see that. That's not a bad, is it? I'm literally shaking right now. That's so cool. That was so cool. Wow.

45:24That was amazing. It feels like you stepped into a sci-fi movie because you see this stuff happen in sci-fi all the time. There's eclipses happening in Star Wars and all that stuff. And seeing it with your eyes, it just doesn't feel real. Yeah. It really doesn't. That was so cool. I know it is very privileged of us to say if you get the opportunity, go see one because it's not easy to. But if you have the chance. Yeah. Egypt 20th, 20th, 20th. I don't want it yet. It's not as good as Instagram reels. Yeah. But seeing this on YouTube is way better.

45:55Yeah. You can't share this with one click. YouTube still hasn't figured that out yet. I really, I'm hoping the capture was amazing. I mean, obviously seeing it in person is going to be the coolest thing ever, but I hope our capture gives people a taste of what we just got to see. Can you imagine that for six and a half minutes? That would be pretty surreal. I mean, appreciating it for 90 seconds was fun. That was so cool. Getting to stare at it for six minutes would be insane. Can you imagine seeing that not knowing it was a solar eclipse? Yeah. Oh my God. There's a lot of stories about that. I would make the Scooby-Doo sound. I would go.

46:26The sun is coming out, guys. This is crazy. Wow. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. The fact that eclipses are predictable has led to a lot of crazy stories in the past and will, of course, lead to crazy stories in the future.

46:38Have I convinced anyone here to become an umberphile with us? We kind of already are. We've already done two. We've already done this. We did the first one by accident. This one is our, two is a coincidence, three is a pattern. If you do three, you're in the club. If you're paying for it again, I'm in. No, actually, Marquez, I'm going to go back to one of my favorite German expressions. One of my favorite expressions ever, which is einmal ist keinmal. Once is never. That's right. Now that we have done this twice, we have done it once, which is never. It feels like we are way more prepared. What does that mean? What just happened?

47:09I don't know. It's German. It's not a stroke. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. No, it's like, I don't even know why I'm going to this right now. But the idea that if you do something once, it's like, yeah, you do. But as soon as you do something twice, it's a part of you. You know what I mean? Once is never. Okay. I like it. That was beautiful. Thank you. I can see that. Thank you, Adam. Landing the drone very safely and responsibly. Hopefully we got that shot. It's day again, guys. It's day again. I hope you slept well. The sun's coming back out. Good morning. God, seeing that with your eyes is so insane. That was crazy. Wow. I don't have much more to say. I mean, you feel the breeze. You see the sun coming back out. That was beautiful. The beautiful mountains and all the shadows that we just witnessed.

47:42I think this is a perfect time to end this little podcast. Before we end, can we give a big, big thank you to our amazing Spanish crew who helped us out over there? Well, first, this podcast doesn't happen without Harper, Rich, Rufus, Brandon coming to help us. And it really doesn't happen without Juan, Isabella, and Lucia. If you guys all want to come in camera for a minute. If you want to be in a YouTube video. Seriously, you guys put so much work into this.

48:14And it's been a long two days. And it's, I mean, this was the coolest thing ever. I hope all of you thought that was really amazing. Glad we got to see it. Glad we all got to show it to some people. And without any further ado, we'll catch you next week. Yeah, regular episode. Talking about the pixel, baby. Oh, yeah, there's a pixel thing. I don't know. There might be. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

48:44I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.