Oleg Zabluda's blog
Friday, May 18, 2012
 
Solar eclipse on May 20, 2012 will be annular.
Solar eclipse on May 20, 2012 will be annular. For the eclipse to be total, one has to be closer to the Moon. Some friends of mine will go to Mount Shasta, which is almost the highest mountain in the Contiguous US at 14,179 ft (=2.7 mi = 4.3 km) , and is in the Moon's shadow. Will they be able to see totality, if they climb to the summit?

We could use sizes of the Moon and Sun and distances and stuff, but instead, we'll cheat and use Magnitude of eclipse 0.9439 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_May_20,_2012

From data we already have at
https://plus.google.com/112065430692128821190/posts/d27aYvbzLDw

the Moon will be ~252,000 mi away, so we'd have to be
~(1-0.9439)*252,000 mi ~= 14,000 mi closer.

Tha't's 5000x farther then the summit of Mt. Shasta. Even cosmo/astronauts at ISS are not high enough, stuck at the pathetic and disgraceful 250 mi orbit. But geostationary satellites at 22,000 Kmi will easily see totality.

What a shame. Back in 1969, Americans could go all the way to the Moon any time they wanted. Now, our bast hope is SpaceX, whose launch I'll be watching tonight 1:15 AM PDT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_May_20,_2012

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