Comment by tamimio
16 hours ago
I have a telescope and traveled hours just so I can see it, and it’s truly memorable, not just the totality but also the trip and all the details of it, I was standing with my telescope outside on the hill (which is also an old castle) and when people were leaving after the totality, they all lined up asking me to see the partial with the telescope (I had the sun filter), kids, families, tourists, everyone!
> having temporarily lost its heliocentric bearings (bees "see" the sun's polarity, which helps keep them oriented).
Thanks for sharing that, I knew bees see different colors but not the sun’s polarity, I just spent two hours down the rabbit hole reading and watching bees stuff, till I ended up with hornets killing the whole beehives so had to stop!
It was my favorite activity of 2024, easily. Went with my twin [&law] and met lots of very neat people. Learned a little bit about the sun, and lots about humble aweface.
My first roadtrip in my first hybrid, who knew a Camry could fjord a creek in some backroad national forest. Beautiful. Then we had tacos (instead of sitting in immediate-post traffic) and laughed some more at people, ourselves.
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>they all lined up asking me to see
I was in an area with >4m of totality, so I definitely shared my single pair of binoculars (my small group was really respectful, I got over 2 minutes zoomed in)... because I had kept my eyes closed for several minutes (before totality), I immediately was able to point out to others three red solar flares (for some reason I initially saw flashes of green, but whoTFknows).
I'm glad I shared, because that's when I first noticed Miss Lone Bee. As a then-beekeeper, I made sure to pay attention when the heliosphere returned to Her little part of this incredible world.
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>till I ended up with hornets killing the whole beehives so had to stop!
There's an entire subculture of hornet-murdering inventions (some clever, some which actually work!) to protect hive entrances. But my favorite has to be: the guy who kills them with a tennis racket.