October 15, 2023
Your birthday coincides with the eternal dance of celestial bodies — planets tracing their ancient orbits, moons rising and setting, comets...
An Eclipse Tree
Birthday · October 15, 2023
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APOD published October 15, 2023. Credit: Shawn Wyre. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Yes, but can your tree do this? If you look closely at the ground in the featured image, you will see many images of yesterday's solar eclipse -- created by a tree. Gaps between tree leaves act like pinhole lenses and each create a small image of the partially eclipsed Sun visible in the other direction. The image was taken in Burleson, Texas, USA. Yesterday, people across the Americas were treated to a partial eclipse of the Sun, when the Moon moves in front of part of the Sun. People in a narrow band of Earth were treated to an annular eclipse, also called a ring-of-fire eclipse, when the Moon becomes completely engulfed by the Sun and sunlight streams around all of the Moon's edges. In answer to the lede question, your tree not only can do this, but will do it every time that a visible solar eclipse passes overhead. Next April 8, a deeper, total solar eclipse will move across North America. Album: Selected eclipse images sent in to APOD
Image credit: Shawn Wyre