Anyone get to see the eclipse?

[hammerofglass]

I was looking forward to it but the clouds were too thick so all I saw was the sky getting darker.

[Madner Kami]

The thing happened almost literally on the other side of the world from my perspective, so: Nope. Didn't get to see it.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I got to see it during some periods. We had alternating cloud and clear sky. Better than not seeing it at all I suppose.

[Nobody700]

I lived right at the epicenter of it so took a bunch of pics.

[Madner Kami]

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Is this from looking directly at it do you suppose, or just being outside happenstance thinking it's just not very sunny?

[Madner Kami]

How do you come from "My eyes hurt" to "It's a bit dark outside"?

Besides, the likelyhood of idiots looking directly into the sun during an eclipse, be it partially or total, is quite high and so are the chances for eye-damage as a result from focusing the light-output of a stellar-sized nuclear fusion reactor directly onto your retina.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

How do you come from "My eyes hurt" to "It's a bit dark outside"?

People make a big deal about noticing the eclipse. Throughout any given day, the sun comes into my general peripheral vision many times, so I'm not certain as to what the big deal is about the eclipse.

I guess people do stare at the sun and that's what those goggles are for, but again, I'm not certain as to if I should take extra precaution during an eclipse or if it's for people that have nothing better to do than look at the sun for 3 minutes.

[Madner Kami]

How do you come from "My eyes hurt" to "It's a bit dark outside"?

People make a big deal about noticing the eclipse. Throughout any given day, the sun comes into my general peripheral vision many times, so I'm not certain as to what the big deal is about the eclipse.

I guess people do stare at the sun and that's what those goggles are for, but again, I'm not certain as to if I should take extra precaution during an eclipse or if it's for people that have nothing better to do than look at the sun for 3 minutes.

Just seconds of looking right at the sun, is already going to badly damage your retina. I'm certain you are generally aware of what a looking glas does, when you focus the light onto something, right? Well, that's exactly what the lense in your eye does to the sunlight: Focusing it into one point on your retina, normally where there's the most dense set of receptor-cells, more or less. This is bad. Forest fires happen that way and it's kinda the same what happens to your retina if you look directly at the sun.

As for "having the sun in your peripheral view", well, the lense in your eye is not really going to focus that light into one single point, so the energy hitting your retina outside the focal point can still be bad, but usually isn't bad enough to cause permanent problems.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Sounds pretty bad.

Also did anyone notice on that map that people in the far corners of Texas and other states were found typing that into Google, but once you cross the state line then it suddenly goes lighter blue. This is so even though you can see the path of the eclipse in a rather discrete path. People in the upper left of Michigan got it worse than the people in Indiana just a few miles away.