Today been a very busy but hugely enjoyable day. We had a big turnout for the Eclipse Event at Maynooth University – I don’t have attendance figures right now, but will update when I do – and good weather in the build-up to the eclipse. Unforunately just as maximum coverage approached, clouds intervened. That was a little disappointing but there were some lovely colour effects that made up for it and it did also get eerily dark…
I heard only nice things about the event from people who attended. Here are some random snaps taken throughout the day:
The combination of heat and exertion meant that I couldn’t resist going for a pint or three afterwards so I think I’ll leave it there, except to congratulate Emma Whelan, whose brainwave today was, plus all the lecturers, technicians and students who made it possible, as well as all the members of the public who participated. It was great to see so many people of all ages release their inner nerd.
As I mentioned last week, the Department of Physics at Maynooth University will be hosting an Eclipse Event, this week on Wednesday August 12th. This sold out very quickly so we expect a good turnout. In the last few days we have been featured prominently in articles in the Irish Times and The Journal and on the RTÉ website. Although it is officially full, there may be a few returns, so it is worth checking on the day to see if we can fit you in.
The viewing of the eclipse will of course depend on the weather, but we have talks lined up indoors and a pop-up planetarium so I hope people will turn up even if the weather isn’t great. I’ve been checking the forecast on the Met Éireann app quite regularly. As of last week it wasn’t very good, with cloud and rain likely but since then it has improved. In the light of my recent post that one can’t really trust Irish weather forecasts more than three days in advance, I thought it would be fun to track the forecast until the big event to see how stable it is.
Here are the summaries for yesterday (Saturday, when it only gave a prediction every three hours for Wednesday), and today (Sunday, where there is an hourly forecast). The peak of the (partial) eclipse is around 7pm (19.00 hours) in Maynooth.
As you can see, the Sunday forecast predicts the temperature on Wednesday to be rather high, with little chance of rain, though with more cloud than the Saturday forecast. I’ll update on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to see how it progresses…
Update: Wednesday 12th, 7.30am. As you can see from the above the forecast for the eclipse is quite good. There is quite a lot of rain out to the west, but it is tracking noreth-eastwards and most of it is forecast to miss Maynooth.
The rainfall situation at 7.30am, Wednesday 12th August
P.S. In the Irish language, “eclipse” can be either urú or éiclips. The former is interesting as it is also the name for a form of initial mutation that occurs certain grammatical situations in Irish, the change at the beginning of a word, where a new letter is placed in front of the original consonant, so that the new letter’s sound replaces (or “eclipses”) the old one.
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In the Dark 