A moment that changed me: I saw my first total solar eclipse – and its beauty shook me to my core

As an astronomer, I had witnessed many celestial phenomena. But nothing prepared me for those few minutes in 2017 when the world fell silent

The Guardian

ScienceDaily: Total solar eclipse led to seismic quiet for cities within its path. “As the Moon swallowed the Sun during the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse, something remarkable happened on the ground—cities went eerily quiet. Scientists analyzing seismic data found that human-generated vibrations, usually caused by traffic, construction, and daily activity, dropped sharply during […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/27/sciencedaily-total-solar-eclipse-led-to-seismic-quiet-for-cities-within-its-path/
ScienceDaily: Total solar eclipse led to seismic quiet for cities within its path

ScienceDaily: Total solar eclipse led to seismic quiet for cities within its path. “As the Moon swallowed the Sun during the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse, something remarkable happened …

ResearchBuzz: Firehose

Just noted interesting parallels between #ArtemisII and Apollo 11 and 12, involving #SolarEclipses, either by the close Moon or by the Earth: during or after each of the three missions the astronauts described these events as their visual highlights. The Artemis II crew has done this several times - and in the post-flight press conference after #Apollo11 Neil Armstrong did it, too, in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz6nzutr7RU#t=42m19s in the segment from 42:20 (in the transcript https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED059051.pdf on PDF pages 21--22).

What he was describing is the eclipse just before arrival at the Moon of which I had re-processed the best image in https://www.facebook.com/dan.fischer.393/posts/pfbid02mf6UK3L2j5SgPiQsJk9JVYmo6XvZwDDZ23BYpXwJPDszaSpUYzuinkMyHzh9RF8Rl -> https://skyweek.wordpress.com/2024/07/25/allgemeines-live-blog-ab-dem-25-juli-2024/#Jul26 (and he is mistaking the zodiacal light they saw and photographed for the solar corona, the very same mistake made repeatedly during Artemis II).

Finally, a solar eclipse by the huge Earth observed from Apollo 12 just before splash-down was described by Alan Bean as "the most spectacular sight of the whole flight" while it happened: https://skyweek.wordpress.com/2019/11/24/eine-fette-sofi-fur-apollo-12-durch-die-erde/ (no images of totality were taken but Bean later painted the view from memory). The reason I had looked up the Apollo 11 presser was to see how this famously well-prepared post-lunar mission presentation looked like and when it happened: 19 days after their return.

Artemis II crew enters moon’s ‘sphere of influence’ ahead of historic flyby

Astronauts on Nasa’s Orion capsule made transition about 39,000 miles from the moon, meaning they feel its gravitational pull more strongly than that of the Earth

The Guardian