A week ago I got the pleasure of seeing a solar eclipse of 99.4% totality! It was really amazing to watch the phenomenon happen in real time. A solar eclipse is a rare moment when the path of the moon crosses over the path of the sun! When this happens, it creates a period of darkness during the middle of the day. During the eclipse I just witnessed there were a few interesting things that happened! First, you can only really tell that it is getting darker when it is within .5% of totality. It looks and feels like a normal day until almost all of the sun is gone. Second, you can see the eclipse in the shadows that trees cast on the ground! There are little crescent shaped sun spots in between the shadows of the leaves! Here are a couple pictures of this phenomenon!
Finally, just before totality, you can see ripples of shadows form on the ground! I still don't know what causes this, but it is so cool! I tried to take a video of the shadow ripples, but was unable to capture them on camera.
Thanks for reading, and have a great day! :)