If you didn’t stay up last evening to catch the total solar eclipse on NASA’s livestream, you missed out on a lot of excitement and cosmic grandeur. There’s lots of content trending on YouTube today, such as this brilliant 4K video (it’s a little unstable, but it gets incredible details of the eclipse) that’s set to the theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey. We can’t think of a better tune to watch a solar eclipse to (Interstellar’s theme song works too, we’ve tested it).
There’s also this video the International Space Station transiting the Sun during the partial:
And this video of what astronauts on the ISS were actually seeing as the eclipse occurred:
But the craziest video we’ve seen so far is from a bunch of wingsuit divers who decided to do a formation dive while the eclipse took place. As everyone looked up, they were looking down, in between making heart signs at the Sun. There’s a spectacular view of the eclipse taking place behind them as they zip through the air.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the science of a solar eclipse, it’s when the Moon passes in between the Sun and Earth. Because the Moon is 400 times closer to Earth than the Sun, and it’s 400 times smaller in circumference as well, they form a perfect match and thus one gets to see a total eclipse if you’re in the path of direct view of the event.
A time lapse explaining the total solar eclipse / Pinterest
We won’t see a total solar eclipse for quite some time – next one is on July 2nd, 2019, time and date is fixed – and it will pass over the Pacific as well as the middle of Argentina and Chile. It will miss nearly all of the Pacific Islands. We’d suggest booking your Buenos Aires tickets well ahead of time, and just south of the city is where you’ll catch a perfect view of the event.
