A crowd waits for totality at a 21 August 2017 eclipse viewing party in South Carolina.
A crowd waits for totality at a 21 August 2017 total solar eclipse viewing party at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Credit: Randy Showstack

Yesterday, the Moon blocked out the Sun, and its shadow raced across the United States in a swath of totality stretching from Oregon to South Carolina. Across the nation, hundreds of millions inside and outside this path took a break from their daily routines to don eclipse glasses, aim their telescopes, or peer into pinhole projectors to witness this celestial show.

And while hundreds of millions geared up to watch the eclipse, we at Eos saw your posts to social media. There’s just something about the movements of the cosmos in the digital age that puts the weird, creative, humorous, and inventive on full display. Here’s just a brief window into some lunar lunacy:

1. Missed the basics? There’re emoji for that!

Thanks, @AstroKatie!

2. Here’s the same idea, but live action.

3. In case you’re still confused.

4. No, we couldn’t reschedule the Moon.

5. Didn’t have eclipse glasses? Not a problem!

6. Ummm…hope you had good luck with that.

7. No.

8. Best be on the safe side.

The welding helmet method looks to be National Park Service approved, at least 26 years ago.

9. Which glasses to use again?

10. Breakfast portended things to come.

11. A chance to hone your inner gourmand.

MoonPies, SunChips, Starburst, and Milky Ways were basic fare at eclipse parties. But as The Oregonian reports, a dessert bar in Portland had “perhaps the most impressive eclipse-themed food item: The Eclipse Magic Cone came in a black charcoal waffle cone tipped with edible gold and filled with marshmallow fluff, golden yellow ginger-spiced turmeric soft-serve ice cream, topped with Pop Rock–cratered black sesame magic shell.”

Yummmmm….

12. A different kind of crafted beer.

Day drinking seemed to get a pass when night invaded midday. Other themed drinks included Blue Moons, Coronas, and even promotional wine labels.

13. We’re not quite sure what this is. 

Maybe the cow jumped over the Moon during the eclipse??

14. You be you.

15. If you didn’t have glasses, there was the colander method.

16. The mesh-umbrella-on-your-face method.

17. The cracker method.

18. The Sun through the trees method.

19. The whatever-this-is method, seen in the path of totality in Gallatin, Tenn.

20. Beware of nostril sunburn, warned these astronauts.

21: This Sun wasn’t hiding behind anything!

22. A friendly PSA.

23. The brave reporters who stared at goats. #goatality

24. An eclipse party held by atheists and, oh, the irony.

Religions have often used eclipses to signal the miraculous or as a harbinger of doom. But this year, the national convention of the American Atheists met in Charleston, within the path of totality.

25. Missed the eclipse? Just fake it.

26. The sci-fi genre made this poet’s caution understandable.

From Little Shop of Horrors to the hit TV show Heroes, solar eclipses have long triggered strangeness on TV.

27. Couldn’t get eclipse glasses in time? Here’s a twist of the knife, via haiku.

28. Ah, lonely poet—we can relate.

29. This haiku master, keeping it real.

30. Brevity is indeed the soul of wit.

None of these strange things eclipsed the actual event, which witnesses say was spectacular. Watch the night come to midday in Corvallis, Ore.

Hear the gasps and cheers of people watching at Oregon State University.

And, of course, relive it:

YouTube video

Got an eclipse funny? Let us know!

—Mohi Kumar (@scimohi), Scientific Content Editor

Also contributing to this story were Eos writers Kimberly Cartier in Gallatin, Tenn., Randy Showstack in Charleston, S.C., and JoAnna Wendel in Corvallis, Ore.

Citation:

Kumar, M. (2017), Howling at the Moon with eclipse enthusiasts, Eos, 98, https://doi.org/10.1029/2017EO080373. Published on 22 August 2017.

Text © 2017. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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