Total Solar Eclipse Explained: Live!

9:45We have all this kind of stuff. If you have enough NDs, you can stack them. You can make sure that you're not setting your camera on fire. You said a lot of words I don't know. I think you probably know most. Yeah, break it down.

9:54Marques Brownlee:What's a solar filter? A solar filter. Okay. There's a lot of different types of radiation that are coming out of the sun. You know, it's heat. It's gamma radiation. and it's all these types of radiation. Solar filter is basically a really, really, really, really strong ND. ND is neutral density, basically just cuts the amount of light that goes through the filter and reaches the other side. These are effectively solar filters, these little glasses that you would put on. This is what we use to look at it. Fun fact about these eclipses, until it gets to a very, very certain point near the center, the amount of light that's coming at you, like relative to what your eyes are picking up, is almost the same.

10:30So when you look through these glasses and you look at the sun, that eclipse could be half done. And still, if you look at the sun with your bare eyes, which you shouldn't do, especially if you're a human. Bare eyes. Unless you're driving. Unless you're driving. It's still going to be way too bright and you're going to set your brain on fire. Now, what a lens is, is basically, it's like a telescope. It's like a microscope. What happens when you raise a microscope off from the concrete, it sets ants on fire. You don't want to do that to your camera sensor. That's bad.

10:57Marques Brownlee:That's really bad. Yeah, so the lens is focusing whatever light comes through onto the sensor. Yes. Pointing it directly at the sun is probably not the best idea. Probably bad. So that's why we're putting the filters on in front of it. Yeah. I'm pretty proud of our setup. Over on this side right here, you've got a little close-up camera with a, what is that, a 500 that we're all the way zoomed in on with the solar filter in front of it. 5 to 600 millimeters is about the right focal length generally to shoot an eclipse, by the way. If you want to get, like, the whole corona and everything going on.

11:24Marques Brownlee:Yeah, it's going to be moving through the sky, and so we'll adjust that. I'm just proud of this setup. I've looked online for videos of people watching eclipses, and yes, there's lots of videos of this, but I don't know if it's ever been done quite like this. We're going to try to lock exposure so you can see the light change as we sit here. We're going to try to get close-ups of the sun. We obviously have Ellis '... The Elio Rufus 9000. The Elio Rufus 9000. Trademarked. So it's a whole thing. Yeah, very exciting. Your camera, if it has autofocus, do not use the autofocus to take a picture of the sun.

11:53It's really bad at tracking the sun. Yes. It's essentially infinity. And it's infinity, effectively. And your camera is not good at focusing at infinity. It uses contrast and things like that to focus. So set it to manual, go all the way. Use it between f8 and f11. That's where the lens is the sharpest. Nice. You've really got to hone in right there. Would all this also apply to film? The film thing is weird because you don't want to be taking pictures of the sun at all until the actual total solar eclipse is happening. That is mostly true. however you're metering for middle gray which means everything is going to be a little bit of like a mid-tone if you want to be able to bring out those highlights you want to overexpose by a little bit but the cooler photos when you're taking a photo of eclipse a lot of people will just zoom in zoom in all the way and just get the eclipse happening that's cool in my opinion way cooler photos is to get environmental photos on your friends your family context some very cool photos from Mexico of an eclipse happening and there's like crazy birds flying around because animals famously freak the hell out when the eclipse happens because it gets really cold really quickly.

12:59David Imel:You can actually feel it getting colder already. Yeah. The crickets going off, I think was my favorite thing that happened in 2024. Just like it's night.

13:08Marques Brownlee:Yeah. It went from suddenly daytime to suddenly nighttime and all the animals behaved in weird ways.

13:13David Imel:I slept through my alarm.

13:15Marques Brownlee:I did see a cricket earlier, so I'm kind of hoping When we get some of this. We'll see. I'm going to confirm.

13:19David Imel:They're here.

13:20Marques Brownlee:So another fun fact about eclipses is, well, we know enough about the solar system and the celestial bodies in it that they're predictable. Like we know when they're going to happen and where. And for the next thousand years, we know all the eclipses that are going to happen and when they're going to happen and where in the sky they'll happen. And we knew that this one was going to be low in the sky. And at first that concerned me a little bit. I thought, oh, it's not going to be really that bright when it turns to night. So maybe it'll be less dramatic. and the one we experienced in Ohio was the middle of the day.

13:48Marques Brownlee:It was overhead and it went to nighttime and that was crazy. But from what I understand, because this one is right at the very end of the eclipse, the shadow is really elongated and will sweep in really fast and it'll get darker faster.

14:02Andrew Edwards:Oh no.

14:03Marques Brownlee:And so I'm looking forward to seeing that too. That's going to be crazy.

14:05Andrew Edwards:Faster than the last one? Because the last one felt like a light switch.

14:07Marques Brownlee:The last one, and I have videos of this because our memories are cruel. They sometimes confuse us. I thought it was like a 10 minute eclipse. over here baby i went back and watched my video of it and it's about the last two minutes that it started to really rapidly get darker yeah two minutes of getting dark which is still very fast i retract the elephant comment but i'm excited to see that be a little bit different plus the different colors of it being spain and having you know this little sunlight light that we're having it'll be cool i just looked at the sun again yeah don't stop looking at the sun it's so tempting perceived brightness and luminance is also logarithmic it's gonna be like we can see we can see, we can see, we can see, and then instantly just boom, when it gets to the center.

14:47And why is it logarithmic, David? I don't know. It's your favorite thing. It's the inverse square law. Oh, yeah, inverse square law. Yeah, that's true.

14:53Marques Brownlee:The further away a light source is... I know it is my favorite thing. It's fine. So there's a trivia question I'd like to ask you guys. Oh, God. Okay. Alright, so there's a very special reason why a total solar eclipse is possible and why it looks the way it does. There's a term, actually, that I want to just jump in and make sure we have here called called magnitude. And when the magnitude of the sun and the magnitude of the moon are equal, essentially when they're the exact same size in the sky and they overlap each other, coverage, magnitude is 1, 1.0. And so a perfect 1.0 is a total solar eclipse, right?

15:31Marques Brownlee:Does anyone know why that's possible? Why that happens exactly perfectly in the sky? Magic? Magic. Coincidence? I'm going to play, we don't have the speaker out,

15:39Andrew Edwards:but in post I'm going to add the trivia waiting music. Nice.

15:44Marques Brownlee:Nobody knows? Why does it happen? Why the moon can go perfectly? Yeah, why is it possible? Because lots of other planets have moons. But if you watch a solar eclipse on Mars with its moon Europa, you just see a chunk floating in front of the sun, and it doesn't fully eclipse the sun. It doesn't cover the sun. Magnitude never reaches one. But on Earth, for some reason, we have this perfect one-to-one.

16:04Andrew Edwards:It's not just luck. It is luck.

16:07Marques Brownlee:Oh. I guess that's a fair answer. but the answer is because it appears so the moon is 250 ,000 miles away something like that I wouldn't know 250 ,000 miles away so the sun is 400 times further away but it's 400 times bigger whoa so because of that perfect ratio they appear the same size so that's how we get the one so it really is just a random stroke of luck that's crazy

16:37Andrew Edwards:Marquez, yesterday you asked me my favorite moon fact. Is that your favorite moon fact? It might be, honestly. So the one, you want to say the one that you said? I said my favorite moon fact is what I assume is also based on luck, that the moon rotates at about the same rate it revolves so that we always see the same. The same part. I think that's very beautiful and poetic. I don't know if that's because of some law of the universe or if, again, it's just kind of based.

17:02Marques Brownlee:Pure chance, which is pretty crazy. So some things just spin in the sky is what you're saying. Well, one revolution of the moon, since it revolves, is the same length as one orbit, so it always faces us perfectly. Are there other moons that are turning for other planets?

17:19David Imel:The moon is hitting a perfect parallax all the time. Exactly. All the time. The moon best camera person confirmed.

17:25Andrew Edwards:The moon is actually just hitting trick shots all day and night. Anyway, okay, quick break.

17:40Marques Brownlee:This bonus episode is done in partnership with Airbnb, so shout out to them. You don't need an eclipse to go to Spain. The travel is a lot of the joy that we get to experience in the first place. And it should be immersive. It's not just about the tourist landmarks. It's about getting to know the people and the culture and seeing the world through fresh eyes. And so Airbnb is really the perfect way to do that. I've used Airbnb to book a lot of stays in the past. I've been lucky enough to travel all over the world for Ultimate Frisbee, as you guys have probably noticed by now. And I'm going directly to the World Club Championships after this in Ireland.

18:11Marques Brownlee:And of course, my team booked a really nice place to stay with Airbnb. The last time we had a World Championships four years ago, we also booked a place to stay with Airbnb. And it was awesome. And we won. So we can't rule out Airbnb being our responsibility. Nope. Can't rule it out. So thanks to Airbnb. When you explore new cultures and meet new people, you discover new things about yourself. and Airbnb is the best way to book the perfect stay for your next adventure. So shout out to them for sponsoring this episode.

18:40David Imel:Shout out to Marquez for that one take. Wow, one take. We couldn't screw it up because of the clock. Yeah, this is all real time. This is real time. Real time.

18:48Marques Brownlee:Yeah. I was waiting for you to screw up so that I could be like, everyone always asks what we do and I have breaks. And you didn't screw up. Now we're cooking. Marquez told me that if I can tell him a fact he's never heard about an eclipse, he'll give me$100 per fact. And then what did you do? Did you look up a bunch of crazy obscures? I looked up facts Marquez did not know about the eclipse. He literally Googled. Bring him on. All right. Did you know? Did I know? That helium. Let me try to see if I know before you reveal the whole fact. Word per word. Word per word. Did you know that helium? Uh-huh.

19:14Do you know it yet? It's one of the gases in the corona? No. Is the only element we didn't discover on Earth.

19:24Marques Brownlee:Okay. Helium is the only element we didn't discover on Earth. But rather that we discovered on the sun.

19:28Andrew Edwards:Wait, you mean that like balloons predate like our after space travel in the tech tree?

19:36Marques Brownlee:That's exactly what I'm saying. You're saying that the periodic table had no helium on it. And that was the first element, maybe the only element that was discovered by looking out. In 1868, during an eclipse in India, they saw a band of color that they didn't know what it was. Wait, who banned it? Oh, they banned the color. I can't see it. I saw a band color. Yeah, sorry. And just like in our episode about how the JWST, James Webb Space Telescope, sees into the past, they used that to pinpoint the exact element that was happening. And they didn't know what it was. And they named it Helios, Helium, Helios, after the sun.

20:18That's why it's called Helium. And that's how they discovered it.

20:21David Imel:Do you know how I know you get the hundred bucks? Because Marcus went, oh.

20:25Marques Brownlee:Yeah. You don't say that when you know it already. Can I get a chance at$100? That's good. I don't know if that's an eclipse. I guess it's an eclipse fact. It was during an eclipse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's fair. I'll give you that. They saw it around the corona. What year did you say?

20:38Andrew Edwards:1868. But the James Webb Space Telescope? No, no, no. Just like during our Dave Jowt BST episode where they used the elements. Yeah, they discovered, whatever. You just listen to it. Listen to the episode. That's a good one.

20:52Marques Brownlee:I did not know that. Wow. $100. $100. There it is. I have another one. You want to go back to back? You can go for back to back. You want me to go back to back? I'd love to hear another fun fact. Now, if you didn't know this one, you owe Marquez 100 points. No, no, no, no. Just double or nothing. I'm trying to remember it. I have to open my laptop.

21:09David Imel:Can I throw one out there, which Marquez knows because he read this. So, listener of the show, Tom, is an astronomer and sent us a bunch of facts. Asked him to get as obscure as possible. And the way I know Marquez's research much is he was like...

21:22Andrew Edwards:Obscure. Another eclipse button.

21:24David Imel:Nice. I was working on that. But there was one where he knew a little bit about it. But so in 2024, amateur astronomers discovered a comet during the eclipse. Oh, sorry.

21:35Andrew Edwards:That one's not really anything either. It's just 50 % obscurity. I can tell. Yeah, I was looking at it.

21:38David Imel:Which was then. So Marques knew about the comet during the eclipse, but it was then destroyed the next day during its closest approach to the sun. Yeah. Something also similar happened in 1882 in Egypt where they saw a comet and then never saw it again. Wow. That's crazy. That's crazy. That's wild. Okay. I remembered mine. Okay, so maybe this one doesn't count, but the other one did for sure.

21:58Marques Brownlee:All right. So the Spanish are preparing for a really intense hit to their power grid because five megawatts of energy is going to drop between the 90 seconds that the eclipse is happening, which is 13 % of their total grid capacity during that time. Yeah, we passed a lot of solar panels. I was noticing that. A lot of solar. 13 % of the total energy they are receiving at any given time is just going to disappear. and so they are like a little bit worried that people might lose power and they need to make sure that like all of the stored energy actually can get pushed through the grid. That is a fun fact.

22:3113%. Wait, did you know that? I did not know that. That's a hundred bucks. I did not know that. I'm telling you. That's good. That's really good. I'm telling you. We got fun facts. Yeah, Marquez, your turn.

22:41Marques Brownlee:I can see it slowly starting to get slightly dimmer. I don't know if you guys are feeling that too. The shadows are a tiny, the sun is officially half covered. Yeah. And it feels a little different. Yeah. But it's not like dramatic yet. Yeah. Just a little. Oh, I looked. Don't do what I did. Okay. Let me see if I have another fun. Oh, yeah. Okay. So eclipses are very predictable, as you know. You look so excited. So we can look forward on the calendar and just decide. Like you guys have probably already heard about the next major eclipse, which is Egypt in 2028 or 2027. Yeah. which has a famously six and a half minute totality.

23:27Marques Brownlee:Crazy. Which is insane. The one that we are going to witness when we reach a 1.0 magnitude is about 90 seconds long, which is still crazy. 90 seconds of no sun in the sky is still crazy. But six and a half minutes is historically long. That's long. Do you guys know the longest total solar eclipse that is theoretically possible on planet Earth? Seven minutes and 28 seconds.

23:48David Imel:I feel like you spoiled this at dinner last night. I think you did. but I can't remember correctly. 7 minute 29 seconds. Were you paying attention? To Marquez talking at dinner? I thought it was closer to 8.

23:57Marques Brownlee:No, it was 7. We don't have whiteboards but you can all just... Yeah, I'm saying 7.29.

24:01Andrew Edwards:It was like 7.28 or something. I'm going to put in the 6s.

24:04Marques Brownlee:I'm going to go say 6.45.

24:05Andrew Edwards:Taking the over.

24:08Marques Brownlee:Yeah, David nailed it. It's just short of 7 and a half minutes. I knew David was paying attention because he wanted that 100 bucks. It's the longest theoretical eclipse possible. So that one next year, not that I have plans to go but if anybody's going to be in Northern Egypt or Northern Africa in 2027, you're in for a treat, my friends.

24:24David Imel:It's so long, you have to go. How far did we travel for the 92nd eclipse? For this? We brought nine people. We traveled an eight-hour flight, a three-hour car ride, closer to like 10 hours for some of us. This is funny. My golden rule,

24:41Marques Brownlee:actually, maybe you have this rule too. I have a golden rule whenever I'm playing Frisbee for like pickup or any random stuff. I don't like to drive for longer than I'm going to play. So if it's like an hour long of pickup, I won't drive more than an hour to go. We totally broke that rule for us. We are witnessing a 90-second event that we traveled days for. Yeah, but we're potting for eight hours.

25:02Andrew Edwards:True.

25:03Marques Brownlee:And this is an elite, amazing podcast.

25:04Andrew Edwards:Wait, Andrew, you said for some of us, the drive was more than three hours.

25:08David Imel:We got a flat tire on the way.

25:10Andrew Edwards:That's true. Full story on the studio channel. But at least you got a flat tire in like a super fun populated area full of stuff to do, right? Listen, I'm going to say truck stop,

25:20David Imel:but compared to truck stops like in Kearney, it was a pretty sweet truck stop. And there was an adorable dog that kind of looked like Mac. So if I'm going to sit behind at a truck stop, I'm going to do it with a dog that looks like my old one. Very cute. That's pretty fun. Working on pixel content in the Spanish sun. I have a bunch of sweet pictures of David working on a bunch of articles in random spots along the side of the highway in Spain. Nice.

25:42Marques Brownlee:All right, I have another random trivia question for you guys. Hey, David, to us. So David has one point. I don't know if we're keeping track.

25:48David Imel:One. I thought it was two. One point and$200.

25:51Marques Brownlee:Oh, yeah. Well, that's separate. All right. So officially, this is the second solar eclipse that some of us have seen, which we traveled and went specifically out here to see this one. Wow, it's getting a little darker. Yeah, you can tell it's getting...

26:03Andrew Edwards:There is a term. 61 % obscurity, and we've dropped about 4 ,000 lux right now already. It's chilly, too. I feel like it's not high. Yeah, it's getting colder, for sure. Nice and chilly. What's the temperature? 88. 88. 88. It feels like 78. That's crazy.

26:19Marques Brownlee:There is a term specifically, a Google dictionary defined term for people who go and travel and go see eclipses specifically. Do you know what this word is? Eclipse chaser. An eclipse chaser. Yeah, buddy. I knew this one. You know the word? Oh, it's an actual word for eclipse chaser? It's a word fluorometer.

26:37Andrew Edwards:Wait, is it a portmanteau or is it like two words combined or is it just one word? Um, it is, it is one word. Solarphile?

26:47Marques Brownlee:Damn, I was going to say heliophile. Is it just astronomer? Lover of the sun. You guys are on the right track. I don't want to give it away, but that's not a bad guess. Uh, is it a... Solarometer. It has a... I'll keep giving you hints until you get it.

27:00Andrew Edwards:On a scale of one to ten, how silly is it?

27:03Marques Brownlee:It's like a five. It's kind of silly. Oh, so it's mid - It's kind of silly.

27:06Andrew Edwards:Mid-whimsy. Uh, mid-whimsy. Is it a coverage enthusiast? You're close. You're so... Solar enthusiast. Combine what you just said. with what you said earlier. The file or the solar file? Is it a cover file? Coverage file? You're close now. You're close now. It's a... It's Latin root. Oh.

27:23Marques Brownlee:Cover file. You're so close. What's the Latin root? If you don't know it now, it's fine. Yeah, I might give up. That's fine. Hit me. An umberphile. Ah. The Latin word for shadow is someone who chases, eclipses, and travels for them. That is an umberphile. So we're all umberphiles. I'm gonna go look at this. Apparently, yeah. You haven't looked recently.

27:41David Imel:It's like crescent moon right now. Holy moly. Okay, that is a full crescent sun. Wow. We might be close to the podcast where none of us are looking at the camera anymore.

27:50Andrew Edwards:Marquez, is this what you'd call a waxing gibbous sun?

27:53Marques Brownlee:This is waning, but yes. Yes, it is a waning crescent, the opposite of what you said, actually. But it's pretty cool. Give us the sun. Oh, I looked at it and it didn't hurt. Yeah, it did. It did hurt for a second. It was a quick glance. Don't do it. Don't do that. Don't do that.

28:10David Imel:So we're getting close. I think you'll have to excuse me. I'm going to try and put the drone up. We're going to do it. I like this idea.

28:19Andrew Edwards:Good luck. While you do that, can I talk a little bit?

28:23David Imel:I'm going to start getting it ready.

28:24Marques Brownlee:What's the time left? We're about 14 and a half minutes from Totality. It's crazy how interesting the light is getting right now. This looks beautiful. Do you think if we held up like a... You see that hat Harper has right there? Can you bring that hat over here? So what I see a lot of people doing yeah when the Sun gets really really small It's like a point light in the sky and people bring literally like a colander like a like a strainer or whatever Yeah, and when you do and you hold it up the light the shadows are like crescent shaped This is because it's like a pinhole camera exactly This is a bunch of pinhole cameras

28:57Andrew Edwards:I am seeing the thing where depending on the angle you hold stuff at your shadows get softer and sharper and this specific eclipse the shadows go horizontally. So you're going to have to have some sort of surface to shine it onto. This is a total coincidence that we have

29:13Marques Brownlee:this crate, but it's got these slots in it. Great coincidence. Oh, that's so weird. Wait, take a video. Look at these. You can kind of see it. You can kind of see it. Yeah, it'll get more interesting. Okay, as we go. A pinhole camera is basically any small, tiny, tiny little hole that inverts the light that's coming through that hole. The more circular, the smaller. Oh, there it is. Look at that. Look at that. You can basically make a pinhole camera out of anything. And the reason it gets really interesting is because the light source is the sun, which has a mask on it now. And because it has a mask, all of the little droplets are going to have little shapes.

29:46Are you ready for this? I'm ready. See the bottom?

29:48Marques Brownlee:See the holes in this? See the circle in the middle? I see, oh, there's a circle!

29:51Andrew Edwards:We got a circle. Whoa! That ain't no circle!

29:54Marques Brownlee:It's a crescent. Oh, I see it. Over there. There's a singular circle. Yeah, that little circle. It's a crescent circle. It's supposed to be a circle. I don't know if you're going to be able to catch that. No, camera. Adam's pointing his camera at it. We'll cut it in if it looks any good. Yeah, if not, sorry. We'll just bump the contrast up to 1 ,000. 1 ,000, yeah. I'll just put a Michael graphic. How quickly can he turn these around? Yeah. That is pretty awesome. Yeah. All right. I did mention the width of the path of totality earlier, so I guess that's off the table for points. Only 150 miles or so to really be in the path of totality.

30:25Marques Brownlee:And we're in that 150 miles. Yeah, that's the path of how wide it is for you to be in the center of the shadow where a magnitude is one, and you get a total solar eclipse. Of the heart? A 99 % solar eclipse will look like this. It will look like it's daytime. It won't get nearly as dark. So I'm very excited for the dramatic. Yeah, I remember last time when you guys were in Ohio, I remember going to the beach that day to try to get a better look at it. And you couldn't tell. Because you had a partial. Yeah, unless you had the glasses. With the glasses and you looked at it, then you can see a little bit of the obscurity.

30:54Yeah, other than that. That's crazy.

30:56Marques Brownlee:All right, here's a crazy fact. I mean, there's zero shot you'll ever get it, so I won't even try to ask. I'm just going to tell you the fact. Okay. The next Halloween total solar eclipse. What? It'll be 2692. That's a while. Oh, wow. I'm going to go to that. The last New Year's Day total solar eclipse. The last one. Was 1889. Oh. That's actually pretty recent. That's around for that one. When's the next one? Which holiday can you never get a total solar eclipse? Cinco de Mayo.

31:21Andrew Edwards:Leap year day.

31:23Marques Brownlee:Holiday. The leap year.

31:24Andrew Edwards:My birthday.

31:26Marques Brownlee:Holiday.

31:27Andrew Edwards:Do you know that for sure? Is it Christmas? I'm pretty sure. Cinco de Mayo. I said that already. No. Holiday. July 4th. No. In Spain. That is, sorry, that was a call for our temperature check, which I guess we sort of already did. But Rufus, I can't, can you yell at me? 87.9. 87.9. So we dropped 0.1 degrees. It feels a lot cooler, though. It's getting breezy. That's fine. The droplets on my back are not falling as often now. We're at 656 lux. All right. 656. The line on the graph is dramatic. Yeah, we have a recording, a graph that just is watching. We probably should have screen recorded that computer when we started, but, you know, whatever.

32:04Andrew Edwards:But we started about 7 ,000 lux of light. So we've dropped so much. It is so crazy. You still can't stare at the sun, but it's almost completely covered. Oh, it got way dark. Yeah, it got way dark. Whoa, it's getting dark fast. Okay, back to your question. I'm going to say Valentine's Day. No. Damn. Is it a holiday in the United States? Yes. Is it the 4th of July? It is not.

32:28David Imel:Did we say, you said Thanksgiving? Is it Christmas?

32:30Andrew Edwards:I said Christmas. It is not. I didn't say Thanksgiving.

32:32David Imel:New Year's Eve? No. Easter?

32:35Marques Brownlee:Yes. What? Wait, why? Why? Because of the way Easter is drawn into the calendar, it's always a specific set of dates relative to the full moon. Relative. And by definition, a total solar eclipse can only happen during a new moon, which is about four weeks after. And Easter is typically two weeks after the first full moon. of the month. So you can never have a total solar eclipse on Easter. That's crazy. It's wild, right? Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Anyway, okay, it is cooking now. Oh, my God. The light is getting so good. Yeah, looking across the fields is insane. Don't look at it. Oh, yeah. The shadows are pin sharp.

33:13Yeah.

33:14Marques Brownlee:Pin sharp right now. It's a drone. We have a film camera. You don't even need the glasses? You're doing this no-scope in it? Andrew's just free-soloing the drone right now. The drone is up.

33:23Andrew Edwards:While Andrew gets that drone in the sky, I just want to say, while I have 30 seconds. Rufus devised a genius way to measure the light out here with this little clip with a piece of sort of diffused soft white plastic. So we're actually using the iPad's camera looking at that piece of white to deduce how bright it is outside.

33:43Marques Brownlee:Is it the front-facing camera?

33:44Andrew Edwards:Yes, it is the front-facing camera.

33:46Marques Brownlee:I think it would be more dramatic if we were looking the other way. Facing the sun.

33:50Andrew Edwards:We're going for ambient light. So if it was facing the light, the camera would just be looking right at the sun and it would blast. That's an incident meter over there. It is literally an incident meter and we've been checking with an incident meter and it is just so accurate. It's crazy. Rufus absolutely. No, not spot on. That would be spot meter.

34:05David Imel:Incident on.

34:06Andrew Edwards:Incident on. Shout out Rufus and his genius technological skills. He was like, what if we just get clip, put clip on iPad? And we were like, okay. This is so cool.

34:18David Imel:This is interesting. It says I currently have weak satellite signal. Whoa. And I can't go more than 10 meters. so is there a potential that that's because of what is happening right now? Satellites shouldn't be affected.

34:29Andrew Edwards:Why does a satellite need to talk to the drone? Sorry. I think it should be fine. Reasons. Oh, there's a bird. Oh, the birds are leaving. They're so upset. Oh, there's only two. It's fine. They're going crazy. They're just having a good time. There's only two birds in Spain. The light is so loud. There they are.

34:46Marques Brownlee:The light is so loud. Yeah, we're entering the last couple minutes where we're just going to be looking around and gawking at what's happening and hopefully video viewers, hopefully if you're an audio listener, you've switched to the video version so you can really feel what's going on with us.

34:58Andrew Edwards:We're about to hit eight minutes.

35:00Marques Brownlee:Yeah, eight minutes. The light turns metallic. Now, I read this in the description that the light turns metallic. I'm not sure what metallic means, but the light feels really different.

35:09Andrew Edwards:I think I can actually explain this one. Yes, please do. I believe it is something called the Purkinje effect.

35:15Marques Brownlee:Okay.

35:16Andrew Edwards:And the reason the Purkinje effect is that our eyes... Wow, okay. You're doing great, sweetie. I reread this so many times, and I know I'm going to get it slightly off, but our eyes deduce brightness from reds much more than blues. And so as the sun begins to go away, our eyes use fewer cones, which see color, and more rods, which see luminosity. So we become way less sensitive to red light. which is a lot of what's around us. And that's also why faces sort of look monochrome-y during an eclipse.

35:56Marques Brownlee:Yeah, certainly. I don't know. I can't see the camera feed, but I bet we look really different than we did.

36:00David Imel:Do you think mantis shrimp freak out during the eclipse?

36:02Marques Brownlee:Wait, why?

36:03David Imel:Because they can see like nine times the amount of colors that humans can. Oh, really? Was that a shrimp fact during the eclipse?

36:08Andrew Edwards:Wow. Whoa. Where's Mariah? Many of them are above ground. Mantis shrimp, which can also punch the speed of a bullet. Whoa. Whoa. We can have two shots. I'll do the fun facts around here. I think that green light is half, your eyes are half as sensitive to green light because that's why there's two green pixels for every red and blue on a display.

36:34David Imel:The vibe's getting weird. The vibe is getting weird.

36:36Marques Brownlee:It's kind of feeling like an accelerated sunset. The wind is picking up. It's like if you put a sunset on like 2x speed.

36:42Andrew Edwards:Yeah, like 5x speed.

36:44David Imel:It feels like a photo filter on.

36:46Andrew Edwards:This is crazy. This is, the dynamic range of the environment is very low right now. This is, yes. I'm going to take some photos of you guys.

36:54Marques Brownlee:I'm going to take a photo of this. It's not going to show up. Yeah, no, good luck. It's crazy. Do you have any other fun facts? I do have one more. I knew it. One more? This is maybe the, I don't know if I say this is a fun fact or just a crazy, a strange fact. So, first of all, this is sort of blended. There are several different types of eclipses. There's lunar eclipses, as you know. There's this, which is a total solar eclipse. There's also partial solar eclipses. There's also something else called an annular eclipse. Does anybody know what that is? Every year. It's when the moon blocks the year.

37:27Marques Brownlee:Not annual, annular.

37:31David Imel:Isn't it like, it has to do with another eclipse, correct? No. Does the eclipse eclipse the eclipse?

37:39Andrew Edwards:Is it like yo annulo to annulas?

37:43David Imel:I'm in Spain for three days.

37:44Andrew Edwards:Because we're in Spain?

37:45Marques Brownlee:Oh, the shadows are getting long. I'll just, okay. An annular eclipse. So as you probably know, the moon orbits the earth. Sometimes the moon is a little bit further away from earth. And so when it does line up perfectly and cast a shadow on earth at its maximum furthest distance from the earth, it's actually not big enough in the sky anymore to fully cover the sun. And so it will do the alignment in the sky, but the magnitude never reaches one. And you see some of the outside of the sun as well as the corona. And it's called a ring of fire. Oh, that's a very special, very different looking eclipse.

38:15Marques Brownlee:And that one you still probably can't look at? I think you probably want to play it safe and not look at it because it's not a total solar eclipse. You're seeing some of the sun.

38:23David Imel:The default answer should be don't look at sun. Yeah, that's fair.

38:25Marques Brownlee:But very, very interesting phenomenon that leads to my final fun fact, which is that the moon is moving away from the earth very slowly at a rate of about one inch per year. Wait, so there's a future where it just like spins away? Yes, which means we die.

38:44Andrew Edwards:There won't be solar eclipses forever.

38:45Marques Brownlee:Which means there's a finite number of solar eclipses.

38:48Andrew Edwards:Wait, so there will be a last total solar eclipse?

38:50Marques Brownlee:Will we be here for that?

38:51Andrew Edwards:We're potting.

38:52Marques Brownlee:We will not be there for the last. It is so much darker. It got real dark. I mean, especially when you take the glasses off. Yeah. So the question is, how long till the last total solar eclipse? Is it before or after? You can just random, totally random guess. It needs to be more than like 500 years. I mean, you're going to be dead. It's fine. Any guess? 10 ,000 years. 10 ,000 years? I'm going to go with 1 million. One million years? One million years.

39:16Andrew Edwards:Okay, wait. Let's just say 10. I can do some napkin math. You said it moves away at one inch, and I know the ratio is 400 to 400, right? And that's miles? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's not 400 miles, but so... 400 times. How many inches are in a mile? One Somerville. 250 ,000. That's 5 ,000 times 12, so that's like 60 ,000 inches. So I'm going to guess... I'm getting crazy. I've lost track of the math. Yeah. I give up. It's about half a billion years. Oh, swag. So I win. Oh my god, it's almost completely covered.

39:45Marques Brownlee:It's almost completely covered, guys. Oh, it's happening. You know what's crazy? Three minutes left to a totality. Yeah, this isn't even totality yet. If you look through the glasses right now, it's almost completely covered, but outside it's still pretty bright. What does the magnitude look like? It's like 90 % coverage, I think. It's probably 98.

40:01David Imel:That's gotta be.

40:02Marques Brownlee:97. Wow.

40:05Andrew Edwards:Yeah. My coverage estimate is 94, but it's just an estimate. It's a sliver in the sky right now.

40:09David Imel:Oh, here's something that I remember last time that happened. That automatic light just turned on. Oh, yeah. Because it's getting dark enough that the lights are starting to think.

40:16Marques Brownlee:All the sunset. Oh, it's getting so dark.

40:18David Imel:There's no more K.

40:20Andrew Edwards:Or I guess there hasn't been a K.

40:20Marques Brownlee:If you're driving a car, your headlights just turned on. Like all the sunset stuff is happening right now.

40:26David Imel:I think I heard my first cricket also.

40:28Andrew Edwards:That was me.

40:30Marques Brownlee:Starting to get cold. The birds have gone quiet. Yeah, it's a two. The two Spanish birds. The light is dropping. It's getting so crazy right now. And we're closing in on that last phenomenon, which we're going to be able to see, which is the shadows racing through this valley in about a minute they're going to start really accelerating and coming towards us for that last one percent to get to totality do you think we're going to be able to like see it coming or is it going to be like blink and now we're covered fast that's a great question i have no idea i'm really excited to find out we're like up a little bit

41:01David Imel:yeah we're like elevated yeah we're like elevated over the valley which i'm excited to see what that means because last time we were in the middle of a field in ohio at the same level as all the other ground so i can see lights turning on oh it's getting darker i can visibly see it getting darker wait still don't look at the sun guys yeah don't look directly at the sun but you can

41:18Andrew Edwards:kind of look a little bit the uh the elio rufus 9000 will alarm for when we need to put our glasses back on okay yeah right at the end of totality yes when it pokes out the other side that's a great

41:29Marques Brownlee:when you hear the auga it's time to be safe guys it's getting so dark 90 seconds 90 seconds till full coverage. Oh, look at the birds. They're freaking out. The birds are flying away. It is getting dark fast. Oh my gosh, it's getting so dark so fast.

41:46Andrew Edwards:Oh my gosh.

41:48Marques Brownlee:Wow. We got a perfect day, guys. No clouds. This is insane. No obscurity.

41:52Andrew Edwards:It's a perfect day because my four friends are here. We're here with buddies. Yeah, screw the rest of you guys. Sorry. Continuity, man. I'm building the scene. Only the people who can see. Sorry, Harper was on camera. And I didn't know if I can see it on my phone. So my six friends are here. Wait, I can see the eclipse. There's less. Sorry, Brandon. Brandon, come on, Cam. Then it's continuity. Oh, my gosh. It's getting so dark. Less than a minute. My seven friends are here. Sorry. Everyone's just watching us freak out because we have like 30 seconds left.

42:20David Imel:45 seconds?

42:21Marques Brownlee:How am I supposed to have my mic and take photos? Oh, my gosh. So the last 30 seconds, shadow bands rippling. I haven't seen shadow bands yet. It's getting really dark. I'm not seeing shadow bands, but wow, there's a lot more shadows. All right.

42:33Andrew Edwards:30 seconds, folks.

42:34Marques Brownlee:30 seconds. It's so dark. It's so dark. It's the slimmest sliver of a pinpoint of a sun in the sky you can imagine. Marquez, where are your glasses? 20 seconds. I'm not looking at the sun. Okay. But it got dark really fast. That was incredible. That's... Wow. We're almost there. We're almost there. Oh, guys, it's happening. It's happening right now. It's happening. Look at it. You can look at it now. Can you look? No, you can't. I'm waiting. I mean, I'm looking. Wow, it's so crazy. Whoa, it's dark. There's a shadow. There's a shadow. There's a shadow. It looks like a ring right now. It wiped across the sky from right to left.

43:05Marques Brownlee:Holy shit. from right to left. So the right side across the left, and there it is. And that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. This is way cooler than last time. I think the sun is more down. It's so freaking cool. It's so cool. Enjoy the next 90 seconds. No, you're good. You're good. Video viewers hopefully are getting this crazy shot that Brandon is manning right now. Look at the flare off to the left side. Everyone looking at the total solar eclipse.

43:30David Imel:It sees it. Oh my God. I can't wait to see that.

43:33Marques Brownlee:So what you're seeing is Bailey's beads. So there are craters on the moon that slivers of the sun are actually peeking through. So you can still see a bit. So the glow around the moon is the corona, and then the little Bailey's beads and the little birds flying around too. Marquez, you did prove it. I did ask earlier to prove it. I don't hear any crickets, but I do see one very lucky pilot getting an airborne view of this insane flying apocalypse. This is so crazy, guys.

44:01David Imel:It's nighttime. I remember it being the coolest thing I've ever seen. Oh, wait, sorry.

44:04Andrew Edwards:I want to acknowledge the horizon is bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, dark by the sun. Bright, bright, bright, bright, bright.

44:09Marques Brownlee:So to the right, you can see the end of the shadow.

44:13Andrew Edwards:Oh, and there's a crazy cloud over there. I don't know if that's related to that. We couldn't see during the daytime.

44:16Marques Brownlee:It'll go away again when the sun comes out. Like the sky has a shadow on it. Yeah. It's crazy that you can see it moving from right to left. And you can see the coronas blowing up on the edge. On the left edge, there's a big solar flare. Oh, my God. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my God. It's so beautiful.

44:30David Imel:I mean, maybe because it's closer. You know, the sun seems brighter than last time we did it. Maybe because we're in Spain and not Ohio. Oh, glasses on. Glasses on, folks. Glasses on. Oh, wow. That's so fast. It's 9000. It did it.

44:48Marques Brownlee:Nicely done, Rufus. And now everything's going to work.

44:50Andrew Edwards:The Elio part comes first.

44:54David Imel:And the drone, luckily I checked again because it stopped recording at one point, but now it recorded through that whole part. And it is getting lighter again almost immediately. It's like sunrise.

45:03Andrew Edwards:Oh my gosh. Holy crap.

45:05Marques Brownlee:That was so cool. Nice little sunrise from right to left for you. That is so crazy. So what I noticed already immediately, remember the super high overhead one we saw? We had a 360 degree sunset. Yes. That one was far more directionally right to left, which is cool that we got to see that. That's not a bad, is it? I'm literally shaking right now. That's so cool. That was so cool. Wow.

45:24Andrew Edwards:That was amazing. It feels like you stepped into a sci-fi movie because you see this stuff happen in sci-fi all the time. There's eclipses happening in Star Wars and all that stuff. and seeing it with your eyes is, it just doesn't feel real. Yeah. It's so wild. That was so cool.

45:39David Imel:I know it is like very privileged of us to say if you get the opportunity, go see one because it's not easy to, but if you have the chance.

45:48Andrew Edwards:It's not as good as like Instagram reels. Yeah. But seeing this on YouTube is way better. Yeah. You can't share this with one click.

45:56David Imel:YouTube still hasn't figured that out yet. I really,

45:59Marques Brownlee:I'm hoping the capture was as amazing. I mean, obviously seeing it in person is going to be the coolest thing ever, but I hope our capture gives people a taste of what we just got to see. Can you imagine that for six and a half minutes? That would be pretty surreal. I mean, appreciating it for 90 seconds was fun. That was so cool. Getting to stare at it for six minutes would be insane. Can you imagine seeing that not knowing it was a solar eclipse? Yeah. Oh, my God. There's a lot of stories about that.

46:22Andrew Edwards:I would make the Scooby-Doo sound. I would go, arroo.

46:26Marques Brownlee:The sun is coming out, guys.

46:27Andrew Edwards:This is crazy. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.

46:30Marques Brownlee:The fact that eclipses are predictable has led to a lot of crazy stories in the past and will, of course, lead to crazy stories in the future. Have I convinced anyone here to become an umbraphile? Kind of. With us? We kind of already are. We've already done two. We've already done this. We did the first one by accident. This one is our, two is a coincidence, three is a pattern. If you do three, you're in the club.

46:51David Imel:If you're paying for it again, I'm in. Actually, Marquez, I'm going to go back to

46:55Andrew Edwards:one of my favorite German expressions ever, which is Einmal ist keinmal. Once is never. That's right. Now that we have done this twice, we have done it once, which is never. It feels like we are way more prepared. What does that mean?

47:08David Imel:What just happened?

47:09Andrew Edwards:I don't know. It's German. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. No, it's like, I don't even know why I'm going to this right now, but the idea that if you do something once, it's like, yeah, you do. But as soon as you do something twice, it's a part of you. You know what I mean? Once is never. Okay. I like it. That was beautiful.

47:22Marques Brownlee:I can see that. Thank you, Adam. Landing the drone very safely and responsibly. hopefully we got that shot it's day again guys it's day again I hope you slept well the sun's coming back out good morning god seeing that with your eyes is so insane that was crazy wow I don't have much more to say I mean you feel the breeze you see the sun coming back out that was beautiful those beautiful mountains and all the shadows that we just witnessed I think this is a perfect time to end this little podcast before we end can we give a big big thank you

47:48Andrew Edwards:to our amazing Spanish crew who helped us out over there well first

47:53David Imel:this podcast doesn't happen without Harper Rich, Rufus, Brandon coming to help us and it really doesn't happen without Juan, Isabella and Lucia. If you guys all want to come in camera for a minute. Get on the camera. If you want to be in a YouTube video. Seriously, you guys put so much work into this and it's been a long two days and it's I mean this was the coolest thing ever. I hope all of you thought that was really amazing.

48:20Marques Brownlee:Glad we got to see it. Glad we all got to show it to some people and without any further ado We will catch you next week. Yeah, regular episode. So I want the pixel, baby. Oh, yeah, there's a pixel thing. I don't know. There might be.