Those are some great shots. Do you feel "enriched"?
My wife and I are somewhat of amateur astronomers. We travelled to Wyoming for the 2017 eclipse. We have a decent computerized telescope, a dobsonian with a 16" mirror and auto-tracking, and do a lot of viewing and picture taking. And whenever we see these type events, it does get us to thinking. No, I'm not predicting the end of the world, biblical plagues, or other "sky is falling" mantra being posted on the internet surrounding this eclipse.
But we all know that our planet is unique in that all the right ingredients and also the conditions are in place to support life. We have the right moderate temps. We have the tilt of Earth’s axis giving us the seasons. We have the right mix of gases in our atmosphere to support not only human and animal life with oxygen, but also plant life with carbon dioxide. These gases are also transparent to allow the right amount of sunlight for photosynthesis and vitamin D production. I could go on. But these same conditions, perfect to support us, also just happen to be the same conditions that allow for scientific discovery and learning. Because our atmosphere is mostly transparent, we can see into space and see stars and other heavenly bodies. Because of our position in the Milky Way galaxy, not in the middle where supernovae explosions happen and stars are being born, but also not at the edge where dangerous collisions from other bodies in space would pose a risk, but about mid-way out, we are safe from these risks. We know our galaxy is a spiral type with “arms” that extend out; but we are not in one of the arms. We are between two arms in the same plane. That allows us to see the arms of the Milky Way when we look out into space – from either side of the planet. But when we view up or down in relation to our orientation, we see far into space unobstructed. And now to why the eclipse brought all this to our minds. Our moon is rather large compared to the planet’s size (about 1/4). It gives us the right magnetic attraction to support tides and other water movement. But it also allows us to have solar eclipses. While our moon is about 400 times smaller than our sun, it is also about 400 times closer to us. That size and distance ratio allows us to experience total solar eclipses. Without these eclipses, we would never see the sun’s corona (the sun’s outer “atmosphere”) because the light from the sun would always drown it out. We wouldn’t know about various wavelengths of light emitted from the sun. Helium (the second most abundant element in the universe) was first discovered during a solar eclipse when gases could be detected by the wavelengths of light passing through them. No other planet in our solar system has the same ratio of distance and moon size to allow for a solar eclipse. They have their moons’ shadows pass on their surfaces, but not eclipses like Earth experiences. In fact, of the 1,000’s of known planets with moons orbiting them, none have ever been found that have the right ratio of moon size and distance from their sun to produce a total solar eclipse like we experience.
Not to get too religious, but to those that believe that our planet’s existence and the life on it all happened by accident, or by chance, I say the evidence is overwhelmingly against that belief. Too many conditions and variables have to be perfect to support life to have just occurred by accident. And it just so happens that those same variables and conditions also just happen to be the same requirements to support learning and study by observers on the planet. Darken our skies, change the size or distance of our moon, move us closer or farther to/from the sun, position us somewhere else in the galaxy – change any of the variables by even a very small amount, and life as we know it would not exist. Oh some form of life might be able to exist, but not a cognizant, self-aware, learning form of life like humans. Why have the right conditions with no observers? Why have observers with the wrong conditions to see anything? No, there was a grand plan with great forethought to not only allow us to be here, but to learn and grow through our experiences and observations – all made possible by the same conditions; the conditions needed to support us that also allow us to learn and observe.
Yes, I feel enriched every time I witness and then study and contemplate celestial events like solar eclipses.
