Comment by netsharc
1 day ago
Somehow it feels like social media spread ever more FOMO for this year's eclipse, there were long queues for eclipse glasses at local opticians, although where I lived we only had 90% totality (people think each person needs a pair, not aware that you're not going to stare at the thing the whole time, and sharing is possible).
And since the 2026 one is fresh, the 2027 one has a lot of hype and more FOMO for those who MO'ed.
I don’t see the hype as inherently related to social media. There was a lot of hype for the 1999 eclipse that passed through Europe. Everyone was talking about it and where they would go. That’s what it felt like.
It’s a rare and impressive occasion. It’s ok for people to be excited about it.
Buy your glasses in advance.
The BBC news site has a particular boner for slightly unusual moon appearances. If you search the site for moon, there's abundant stories on topics like "blood moon", "buck moon", "super new moon", "strawberry moon", "blue moon", "orange moon", "worm moon", "snow moon", "wolf moon", "harvest moon", the moon being quite near in the sky to Venus, "beaver supermoon", "hunter's moon", "pink moon", and whenever anything even approximating an eclipse happens they write multiple articles about it. So I am given the impression that eclipses happen every other week.
> The BBC news site has a particular boner for slightly unusual moon appearances.
Humans have, and have had for a very long time. And eclipses do happen a lot more often than we realize, as the world is a big place, and not everything visible to us on one side is even talked about on the other side of this sphere, so international sites like BBC make it seem like a lot more stuff is happening, compared to less "this is about the entire planet" news.
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Not exactly every other week, but they do happen at least 2 and up to 5 times a year.
> people think each person needs a pair, not aware that you're not going to stare at the thing the whole time, and sharing is possible
We had like 60 seconds of totality, sharing the glasses with my wife would mean we get 30 seconds each. Of course both of us want double the viewing time and the glasses are a couple of euros.
The period of totality is the only phase when you do not need to use protective eyewear. You would be able to safely look directly at the eclipsed Sun, as long as your timing is precise.
https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety
It's during the partial/annular/penumbral phases when you use the protective eyewear, and those are lasting a couple of hours on each side.
But even protected viewing should be curtailed to a couple of minutes at a time.
> It's during the partial/annular/penumbral phases when you use the protective eyewear
Those are also by far the most interesting phases to watch. Totality itself is just kind of dark.
"Let me potentially permanently damage my eyes to save 20 bucks".
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In Berlin for example all shops ran out of eclipse viewing glasses, people were selling them on eBay & co. at 15 -35 euros a pair…
In Barcelona, they costed a bit less that 2 euros a pair at a pharmacy the day before the eclipse.
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88% Totality here. Queues to buy glasses for 10 bucks the day of the eclipse were hours long.