People from around the world continue to converge in my hometown of
Casper Wyoming to experience the solar eclipse of 2017. Approximately
two hundred and fifty private aircraft will land at the airport tomorrow
to view the eclipse from the tarmac.
Eclipse events gravitate around two venues. Astrocon 2017 takes place at
the Parkway Plaza Hotel Convention Centre. More about Astrocon in a
moment.
The Eclipse Festival takes place on a ten block stretch of 2nd Street,
which is closed to traffic for the duration, only cross traffic is
allowed. It's a block party that's ten blocks long and a couple of
blocks wide.
The block party was absolutely packed last night with humanity. Security
warned me to walk my bicycle because there simply wasn't enough room
between people to safely ride it. There was lots music, dancing,
drinking, and eating.
Jump Craze is a indoor trampoline park for kids and adults who act like
kids. It's my understanding that the entire floor consists of
trampolines of various sizes. You don't walk from room to room, you jump
from room to room. It saps all of a child's energy and leaves parents
with a quiet child afterward. Anyhow, Jump Craze was one of many
businesses who had a presence at the block party. They set up a mini
bungee cord apparatus for kids to jump around in.
There was lots of kids all over the place. It was definitely a family
event. Two gigantic checkerboards were set up in the street, one for
checkers and one for chess. This CBS Denver report gives you a daytime
view of the downtown Eclipse Festival:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5XzrBU3gY4
A scientific community gathers at Astrocon 2017. It's a convention with
the usual amenities: vendor displays and swag. This video shows you one
one of the vendor displays:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7WLdCa2Fd8
_Sky and Telescope_ offers the best swag. My take was
_Beautiful Universe, 2015 Edition_. It's a glossy magazine that contains
129 images.
The Meade company had a large presence, in more ways than one, at a
couple places. Indoors Meade filled at least two vendor booths with
telescopes and other astronomical paraphernalia. Outdoors they set up
a couple of telescopes on one huge AZ mount for public viewing.
A surprisingly small number of people took them up on their offer at any
given point in time. About a half a dozen people were in front of my
wife and me when we joined the viewing line. The two couples in front of
us spoke a foreign language, which sounded romantic, possibly Italian.
Seeing the Sun through a telescope for the first time was a treat! Both
telescopes were refractors. One of the scopes displayed relatively small
black sunspots on a white background. It looked similar to this:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/onlin...-july-17-2017/
The other scope was a Coronado SolarMax Hydrogen-alpha. It displayed a
red Sun en total, with relatively small solar prominences around the
perimeter. It looked similar to this still and video:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astro...o-thesunshine/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFZynuxB3Vk
An enigmatic soft mellifluous tenor voice filled the heavens of the
convention hall. The voice came out of a second floor room. Further
inspection revealed it to be the voice of Carl Sagan narrating the
"Encyclopaedia Galactica" episode of _Cosmos_. Carl spoke about Jean
Francois Champollion, who used the Rosetta stone to decrypt ancient
gyptian heiroglyphics. Carl's disembodied voice spoke to a room full of
empty chairs. Weird. It seems that everyone at Astrocon 2017, including
me, already saw that movie.
Thank you,
--
Don