Sunday, November 3, 2013

Fall back and solar eclipse

Two events are happening tonight.  First, Daylight Saving Time is over.  It's time to fall back.

L.A. Times: Clocks fall back Sunday as Daylight Saving Time ends
By Michael Muskal
November 1, 2013, 12:39 p.m.
Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a person healthy, wealthy and wise, goes the popular wisdom. If you believe that, then this is your weekend as clocks change and most of the U.S. falls back an hour.

The change, officially the end of Daylight Saving Time, comes at 2 a.m. Sunday, when the clocks fall back to 1 a.m. In theory this should give everyone an extra hour of sleep, though how many hours people sleep is often the result of factors other than the clock. The changeover also takes place on the weekend, so what is a rest day can be used in part to offset the chronological changes that for some are akin to jet lag or traveling across a time zone.
...
Perhaps the biggest misconception about the whole process is that somehow by shifting the clock, people are changing the number of hours of daylight. Wrong. What is changing is how society organizes itself to take advantage of time.
More here and here.

Next, there will be a solar eclipse at sunrise local time.  Space.com has a video and article about it.

Rare Hybrid Solar Eclipse Visible This November | Video

Depending on your location, you might be able to see a total ecplise or an annular eclipse on November 3rd, 2013 during a rare hybrid solar eclipse.
Secrets of Sunday's Rare Solar Eclipse Explained
by Joe Rao, SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist
November 01, 2013 07:28pm ET
A slice of eastern North America will undergo a weird and dramatic event early Sunday (Nov. 3) morning:  a partial eclipse of the sun.

For most North American observers, the partial eclipse will coincide with sunrise.  But within a very narrow corridor that extends for 8,345 miles (13,430 kilometers) across the planet, the disks of the sun and the moon will appear to exactly coincide, providing an example of the most unusual type of eclipse: a "hybrid" or "annular-total eclipse."

During annular solar eclipse, the sun looks like a "ring of fire," while the moon and sun line up perfectly during a total eclipse. Throughout a hybrid eclipse, however, the celestial sight transitions from annular to total.
Unfortunately, the extra hour means the sun is up earlier relative to the clock.  However, my cats don't care, so they might wake me up at sunrise anyway.  If so, I'll try to remember to see the partial eclipse--indirectly, of course.  I'm not foolish enough to actually look directly at the sun!

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