June 21 Eclipse

Did you ever walk under trees swaying the breeze with the sun overhead and wonder why the dapples of light are so often perfect circles?   The gaps in the leaves are all different sizes so why does the sunlight come through so often as circles?  The reason is that the gaps in the leaves are small.  Pinhole small.  Small enough to function as a pinhole camera.  That means that the circles you are seeing on the ground are, in fact, a focused image of the sun.   Pretty cool huh?     

During an eclipse the gaps in the leaves work just as well as pinhole cameras but you would notice during the eclipse that the ground under the trees isn’t covered with circles but rather is covered with crescents.   You would be seeing lots of tiny pinhole cameras actually focusing the image of the moon move across the face of the sun.   If you ever get a chance to see it you will have goose bumps.  It is a grand celestial event writ large in the mundane.   Hundreds of thousands of miles away the moon passes in front of the sun that is itself millions of miles away yet every tree that witnesses it paints a thousand pictures of the event on the ground beneath.   Again, goosebumps.