How Ancients Predicted Eclipses

With the North American Eclipse happening on April 8th of this year 2024, Ron Macnaughton decided to explore some more of his passion for "How Ancients Predicted Eclipses". Ron is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada - Toronto Centre and presented at the Recreational Astronomy Night Program both live and online at the Ontario Science Centre on February 7, 2024.

[@QuestforaMeaningfulLife]

Fascinating!

[@douginorlando6260]

I saw the total solar eclipse in Santee S Carolina July 26, 2017. It was amazing. A few minutes before totality, the day started looking like dusk. Birds started chirping. Then it happened quick. Some stars came out (I believe they were actually planets). It was like night but not pitch black. And most amazing was the sun’s corona(it looked angry/scary; not a uniform glow near the eclipse but like streams pointed out radially from the sun stronger in some directions than others, and about the angular length of the Sun diameter). It was ominous to realize that corona was always there my whole life, just normally hidden from view. It reminded me of a subconscious awareness that always was there but normally hidden from the conscious awareness. The other surprising thing was seeing the planets. I also looked to the distant clouds on the horizon for any signs of the edge of totality but could not see it. The sunlight returned extremely bright faster than you could blink (I should have stopped looking at after a couple minutes when the total eclipse was gonna be ending soon). Even just 0.01% of the sun’s disk is dangerously too bright to look at. I can see why a total solar eclipse had a huge emotional impact on the people who experienced it