Ep#22 - Anne Buckle & Graham Jones - Time And Date

Welcome back to TT!    ***(episode updated July 6)***

In this episode we have Anne Buckle and Graham Jones from Timeanddate.com They are the hosts of the eclipse livestreams on Time&Date.com and they join us from Norway.  Hope you enjoy are chat with Anna and Graham!

Leticia and Chris interview Anne Buckle and Graham Jones of timeanddate.com about their eclipse resources, astronomy writing, and 10 years of eclipse live streaming. Graham describes a project revisiting the often-quoted “one total solar eclipse per location every 375 years” result by expanding Jean Meeus’s 1982 analysis from 600 to 15,000 years, using latitude bands and major computing power; they found 373 ± 7 years versus Meeus’s 375 ± 16, then extended work to partial eclipses and other patterns. They discuss building a stronger science team, past streams (2017 and 2023 Exmouth with Perth Observatory and government support), and plans for 2026 with teams near León and Mallorca plus partner feeds from Iceland, Greenwich, and Kassel. They cover cloud risks, eclipse “myths” (eclipses aren’t that rare), Earth-rotation delta‑T uncertainty shifting totality paths, solar cycle 25 trending down from max, and Perseids near the August eclipse under new moon.

00:00 Welcome and Introductions
02:33 Timeanddate Tools Shoutout
03:03 Anna and Graham Backgrounds
03:56 Recalculating Eclipse Frequency
09:16 Building the Eclipse Team
10:51 First Livestream Memories
12:30 Plans for 2026 Spain
14:53 Partners for Europe Coverage
17:38 Anna First Totality Story
19:59 2024 Eclipse Split Teams
23:04 2023 Exmouth Livestream
27:15 Favorite Eclipse Moments
29:14 Moon Deadline Mindset
30:47 Math Meets Wonder
32:33 Saros Series Visualized
34:17 Eclipse Patterns Over Millennia
40:34 Sharing Sky Guides
42:44 Midnight Sun and Auroras
44:53 Solar Cycle 25 Update
46:25 Perseids After Totality
49:02 Eclipse Myths Debunked
50:09 Delta T Shifts Totality
56:29 Wrap Up and Thanks

https://www.timeanddate.com/

https://www.timeanddate.com/company/by/anne-buckle

https://www.timeanddate.com/company/by/graham-jones

Saros 126 Animated Gif:

https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEsarosanimate/126.gif

Saros 126 (72 eclipses 1179CE - 2459CE):

https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEsaros/SEsaros126.html

Leticia Ferrer's site: 

https://texassolareclipses.com/

Host Chris Chotas Alexander's Site
https://www.chotachrome.com/
IG: @chotachrome

Totality Talks is created by Leticia Ferrer and Chris Chotas Alexander.  

Totality Talks is produced by Chris Chotas Alexander.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:15

I'm Letitia Ferrare. And I'm Chris Alexander. And this is Totality Talks, the Solar Eclipse podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

My breath away. This is really cool.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Literally took our breath away.com. They are the hosts of the Eclipse Streams on TimeandDate.com, and they join us from Norway. Hope you enjoy our chat with Anna and Graham.

SPEAKER_04 1:04

Okay. Good here. I'm going to go ahead and open. Today we are talking with Anna Buckle and Graham Jones with timeanddate.com, for which I'm very happy to say, with all the information they provide on eclipses, has been great because when as I travel handing out eclipse glasses like Johnny Appleseed, I can print their page and hand it out with the glasses. So thank you for that public service you do for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Well, that's that's great to know. And by the way, we we just want to thank you guys for your public service doing this podcast series. I mean, it is it is remarkable when you look through the list of people that you guys have spoken to. I mean, you know, going back, I mean, you started off with the legendary Fred Esperna. Um and then, you know, I mean, since then, I mean what Jay Anderson, Mike Frost, Rick Feinberg, Angela Speck, um our old friend Jamie Carter. I mean, it r it really is a it's a it's a who's who of of the eclipse world. So I mean, thanks to you guys for this for this amazing series.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

It's a labor of love. Yeah. It is a labor of love.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

We've really been lucky to get fantastic guests. It's like a star lineup. And we have you today, the time and date people.

SPEAKER_04 2:31

So then I just want to do one more pitch just for your your website, because I was telling Anna earlier, I first became aware of your website with the tool that you came out with, meeting planner. I think that was in like 2001 or 2003, somewhere along that time. I've been using it for I work with global teams. So that has been just the greatest little tool I've been using for the longest time. You had the diamonddate.com has great time tools. It does.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

So give us a little bit of a background of for each of you. I don't know which one of you guys want to start, but were you about to say something, Graham? I I jumped on in front of you there.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Uh no, no, no. I uh Anna, you you normally kick things off for us.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

I normally kick things off with I'm Anna Buckle. This is Graham Jones, and you're watching a total soclips here on timeandate.com. And we do this quite a bit. We've been doing it for 10 years now. Uh we're up to our 33rd show, which is just amazing. And I've been working at Time and Date for the last 12 years. Um, doing uh anything from time zone data to mostly astronomy and moon content and obviously eclipse live streaming for a very long time now. So yeah, journalists by uh education and trade with some with a science background there as well. So yeah, lots of fun.

SPEAKER_04 3:56

So you you basically I'm gonna go ahead and go on to the go to that article that you mentioned about how often eclipses happen and that you've gone back now and redone the math with better computers and more detailed information to be able to calculate how often eclipses do happen for us. You want to share a little bit more of that?

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Yeah, that's Graham's force, eh?

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah, well, this I mean this was a this was a really fun project that a lot of us got involved with. And I mean it was really inspired by that number that we you know that we hear a lot about when eclipses happen. That, you know, on average, any given location on the Earth's globe gets a total solar eclipse once every 375 years, on average. And yeah, I mean we we use this number a lot. We see it quoted a lot in in the media um and by people. Um and um yeah, we we were super interested in this number. It all goes back to uh to a classic paper um done in 1982 that was in the uh British Astronomical Journal, um, a paper by Jean Mias, who is uh uh well, he's also he's also a a legend. He's a mathematical astronomer. Um he worked with Fred Espinach a lot on calculations. Um and he used one of the very first desktop computers, um, an HP 85 back in 1982. And uh you know he basically uh picked a few standard points on the globe and he looked at 600 years of eclipse data and you know, he ran the math and he came up with this uh figure of you know, on average once every 375 years. And you know, we thought it would be super interesting to go back and kind of do the the same thing, but just take advantage of just you know the vast increase uh in computing power that's now available. So instead of looking at 600 years, we looked at 15,000 years of data. Instead of taking just like standard points on the globe, we actually kind of looked at latitude bands, those sort of strips, narrow strips kind of circling the globe. And for each eclipse, we looked at the fraction of each latitude band that got covered by the moon's shadow. So, you know, we we bought a a lot of you know computing power to this. We had a couple of big servers running for like a hundred days on this, you know, crunching the numbers. And um yeah, we had a lot of fun doing that. And you know, we were super excited when we came to look at our results and compare them to the results that uh Jean Mias got all those years ago. And the the kind of the the amazing thing was that you know, it was the question that, you know, were we gonna come up with something completely different? You know, were we going to rewrite the astronomy textbooks here? But we actually got a much cooler answer than rewriting the astronomy textbooks. We actually got an incredibly close answer to the one that Mias got all those years ago. I mean, the actual numbers are that uh Mias got uh once every 375 years, plus or minus 16 years. That was his uncertainty. Um we got once every 373 years plus or minus seven years. So we were able to reduce the uncertainty a bit, but the actual headline figure changed almost not at all. That's important. Um it's it it's it you know it really shows uh you know the amazing work that you can do if you just get the maths right. And if you you know set the problem up in the right way. You don't need endless amounts of data. You can actually do it with quite with quite a you know, you you you pick your period and you pick your standard points, and you can get really good results with that. And you know, it was kind of reassuring to us that we did get such a close match. And it actually kind of gave us the encouragement to then go off and kind of look at other things that Jean Mias wasn't able to do. I mean, he just looked at total eclipses and annular eclipses. Um, you know, we then had the confidence to go and look into partial eclipses and come up with the average frequency for a partial solar eclipse and and do other things with the data as well.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

And this is why we hired this is why we hired Graham and why he's such a good partner for me on this show. How long has it been now? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Oh Anna, I mean, yeah, I I think you you you and I go back to 2017 doing things together. But I mean I think I think that the cool thing is that at time and date that I mean recently we have I mean we have actually added some some really some some some really serious firepower to our astro team. Um couple of years ago, uh we were joined by Frank Twitter, um, and uh his PhD is in celestial mechanics. So, I mean, he's exactly the guy you want for these calculations. Soon after Frank joined us, we were joined by Renata Moland Hoos. Her PhD is in cosmology, and uh, you know, she just brings just amazing analytical skills to all of these kinds of um computations. Um and you know, even on the uh even on just the the organizational side, um uh we were joined by uh Anna Smith. Um her background's actually in geophysics. Um she used to uh manage uh kind of huge geophysics uh projects. And you know, she's now managing these kind of brig projects for us and you know, pushing things through to delivery where you know we can get things, we can get results and we can get things published on the on the website. So yeah, we've got like in in the in recent years, we you know, we're we're we're building uh uh uh yeah, a pretty formidable team.

SPEAKER_04 10:49

Building a wonderful team. I mean, because now you're doing live you've been doing live streaming now for 10 years, partnering with other organizations and universities. It's just amazing. Who did you do the 2017 with? Because that's is that the first one you did? The 2017? Was that the first live stream you did? Or was it one before?

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yeah, so that was that was actually the first time that Anna and I were together in a in a very small studio. Um at the we we we were at the the time and date HQ in Stavanger, Norway, for that one. And um, yeah, we had some we had some nice feeds from across the US. We also had a a really nice partial eclipse feed from the uh from an astronomy club at the European Space Agency's launch site in South America, which is uh right there on the equator. And uh it was really nice because after totality had finished in the US, we we were still able to enjoy this beautiful partial eclipse from from South America, you know, long after everybody had packed up um in the US. So that was uh that was a super fun way to kick off.

SPEAKER_04 12:10

So what was your partner in in the US that was live streaming with you?

SPEAKER_00 12:15

So in the US, we had some feeds coming in from uh I can't remember.

SPEAKER_03 12:26

We can look that up. Back now, nine years to 26. Let's talk about where you're gonna be streaming from. I think you're working with Valencia now for 2026.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Ah, yeah, okay. So we're we're uh we can talk much much better about 2026. Yes. And um, yeah, so uh 2026, um, we are gonna have um we're gonna have two teams on the ground in Spain. So we're gonna have one team in northern Spain, close to Leon in northern Spain.

SPEAKER_04 12:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

And then we have uh a second team right at the end of the path of totality, um uh in Mallorca. Oh, really? Okay. So yeah, we're kind of uh that team is is kind of uh, you know, sort of rolling the dice a bit because obviously, I mean that really is at sunset there. Yeah. And obviously, you know, there's not once you're on an island, you know, difficult to relocate at the last minute. But yeah, fingers crossed, really going for that uh that sunset eclipse from Mallorca, which is gonna be tough.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

That's for sure. We're gonna be tough. I'm going to I'll be in Valencia, but going to Segwenza Castle, kind of a little bit further inland. But at totality, it's only still at 6.5 degrees high in the sky. So that will be rolling the dice. At Mallorca, I can't imagine how it's gonna be. But uh good luck, everyone. Clear skies.

SPEAKER_04 13:57

Yeah. And I'll be in between Saragosa and Terrell. And we've got a couple of spots, but the reason I picked that is for the be to be able to move to at least 200. It's like 250 kilometers between the two. And it's all flat. You get for most of it, you get good clear, your the mountains aren't in the way, and it's mostly farmland. And we don't get cloud shadows.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

But you've been warning us about the clouds, haven't you, Graham?

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, it's I mean the the whole eclipse is is gonna be a huge challenge there. Um in in in Spain. And you know, it is possible that you look at the that you look at the satellite image of Spain on a on a on a summer's evening and you know the whole peninsula is covered in clouds. So yeah, it's it's a challenge. Um we should mention that we are also working with some some great partners for the uh for the eclipse in August as well. We're gonna be getting feeds from from Iceland, from uh Seva Helgerson. Nice, who uh is is doing a great job in Iceland. He's kind of a he's kind of a one-man education and outreach exercise in in Iceland. He's been doing a great job educating the public for the eclipse. And um that's good. Yeah, fingers crossed for him for clear skies. And of course, you know, we shouldn't forget that across the rest of Europe, it you know, it's uh it's a pretty cool partial eclipse as well. Um and um so we're also gonna have some feeds coming in from our friends around Europe as well. We work with um the Greenwich Royal Observatory. We're working there with um, yeah, Greg Brown and Jake Foster, and they do beautiful live streams from on top of the hill in Greenwich in London, and other places. We've got some we have some friends at Castle Observatory in in central Germany, and uh they're just building a new observatory at the moment, and their plan is uh that August 12th will be the official first light for their observatory, their new observatory in Castle, which would be uh I mean a yeah, a great way to a great way to open the observatory.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Pretty hard deadline. That's a that's a deadline for you. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 16:33

Nope. Yeah, and it is to your point, it is a pretty deep eclipse for most of Europe. For most of Europe, it's like eighty-five percent or more for a partial eclipse. So it's pretty deep. It's very, very deep. In fact, I sent some glasses over to I had some of my co-workers from Sweden come in. So I sent them back with a bunch of glasses. And checking out from timeandate.com. And as to how deep, so will you be in the same location?

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Are you being Lyon or will you both be uh Mallorca? Are you are you gonna be?

SPEAKER_02 17:14

So Graham and I are gonna be hosting our live show from the ground in outside of Lyon. So we're gonna be um there with um Jeremy Krauss and Renate Molam, who's who we mentioned earlier. They're gonna be manning a telescope each, and then Graham and I are manning the live show. So we're gonna be there as the action happen happens and sharing it with everyone watching. And we've done that a couple of times before, and I'm like, I have to catch my breath even talking about it, because it's just my first total eclipse was uh on top of a roof in in in Argentina, all the way, all the way west, right on the Tilian border, and we were on the top of a municipality building there where they had like one of those lifts that lifted us up, like one of those with a bucket in it, and we were stuck there on the roof, and we just um I was not prepared, even though I saw an annular eclipse as at six years old. I was not prepared for what I was about to experience. And that was also a sunset eclipse, the sunset behind the mountains, and the temperature went from 30 degrees Celsius, which I believe today is around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, I think. Yeah, down to like 10 degrees Celsius. So it dropped, and we we were just taking that first. We were like hot, and we were like, and then we were putting on our clothes as the as the eclipse happened, and the dog started barking, and the light changed, and you got that silvery, amazing light, but it was also setting. It was and the birds were flapping about and and I was cooked. What was what year? 2019. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Well, that was the 2019. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

Yes, yeah. And we were supposed to go to Argentina a year or two after, um, but COVID hit and we decided not to go. We were we could restore our lives to go.

SPEAKER_04 19:07

Yeah. We're crazy. We're from Texas. What we'll take on.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

Yeah, we just, you know, we wrestled as we were snakes, so we we were ready to I think we were ready to risk our lives, but I don't think our boss was ready to risk our lives because of the new story. But yeah, it was just yeah, totally hooked. And uh it was such a magical experience to it. And it continues to be.

SPEAKER_04 19:35

It continues to be that's an amazing thing. I'm I'm up to 20, like 21 or 22 now. Wow. I've seen every I've attempted to see everyone since 1998 and been clouded out twice.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Oh that's that's a great that's a great record.

SPEAKER_04 19:52

And I'm not an astronomer, I'm not I'm not in the industry.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

No, that's a new record. We the 2024 eclipse we had to split up even like we had two teams for that one as well. We were supposed to be based in in Lano with our uh our uh telescopes there. But the telescope guys, that was Jeremy Krauss and Constantine Bikos, they traveled to Arkadelphia to to for clear skies, and we stayed in Lano, and then we had another team with Stefan Tawson, our uh CEO and chief eclipse chaser, we like to call him, up in Burlington. So, but as the as we were nearing totality, the the the clouds just opened. It was one of those really magical moments. And yeah, it was just we were really, really, really lucky to to get that full we got full totality with no clouds, then the eclipse worked out for people.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

I mean, we had the clouds were looming and ominous, and we were exchanging information back and forth. And seems like most people got that that break in the weather where the temperature changed and the clouds dissipated just enough during totality. And I did it close right back up afterwards or no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Yeah, it it actually stayed fairly cleared. Graham, I can't remember because I was just incomplete. Like it was I was crying. Graham was like, let's get her on, let's get her on, because he wanted me on crying, and and and it was just normally I'm the one doing the introductions, normally I'm doing he's like, We've got Anna, Anna, and I'm like, What? And then it was just a lot of fun because it it is such uh a moment of awe and feeling just feeling together and alone at the same time as just one person in this massive universe and standing there and just being aligned with everything is just um it's something that I'm gonna be sharing and selling to anyone who would like to to get themselves in the path of of a total seller eclipse because it's just I just want to share this magical moment with all everyone.

SPEAKER_04 21:58

I really do. So I've got a whole box of glasses I'm bringing with me. I'm gonna spread them around. Print out page on your website. But you need to go here. Here's a cat.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

And that's that's why we do what we do. That's why we do the live streaming as well, to just make it even more accessible and to just share that that love and magic with the world. Graham and I usually say that we're we're gonna do a bit for world peace when we do our live shows because it really is such a unifying experience. So uh yeah, that's what that's what we're doing for world peace.

SPEAKER_04 22:32

I agree with you on this. Um, because I mean I went to Libya for one eclipse for the 2006, and they opened it up for the scientists and even Americans back then. And thankfully that was a peaceful time. I think if you look, if there's an eclipse, people tend to calm down, looking in anticipation of it. And then when it happens, everybody's like, we really are part of the universe. At least I hope that's what everybody feels, because that's what I feel. That's what I feel.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

When where did you guys stream from for the April 20, 2023 eclipse across Australia? That area.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

Yeah. Do you want to do this one, Graham?

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Ah, yeah. So for this one, uh for this one, we were teaming up with uh Matt Woods and the team at Perth Observatory in Western Australia. And um, yeah, for this one, uh so Stefan Thorsen, our chief eclipse chaser, he he got on a plane from Norway and went halfway around the world um into uh uh to Exmouth. And at the same time, the team from Perth Observatory was sort of driving up the western coast of Australia kind of over a week, 10 days, and kind of doing uh uh sort of uh you know night sky events at little communities on the way up. Um yeah, and then um they met up in in Xmouth. And um we'd also been uh working with the Western Australian government who did a who did a fantastic job, you know, putting in just some some great uh some great cabling and just some wonderful internet uh connections um into the viewing site there in X-Mouth, which was great because I mean it meant we were able to get out, you know, some lovely uh high-quality images. So yeah, along with everybody. And of course, it uh when you talk about X-Mouth, it turns out that everybody was in X-Math, but kind of everybody everybody sort of missed each other as well because especially I mean especially when you're live streaming as well. I mean, there's just so much to do in the in the days before the eclipse. I mean, there is so much to set up. I mean, that's true for everybody, of course, but I mean live stream you know, there's all those extra things uh like the internet connection that have got to be uh put in place as well.

SPEAKER_04 25:05

So um where was your thought within Xmouth?

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Like at the like at the museum or uh yes, it was actually it was actually about 20 miles south of X-Mouth. So a little bit nearer the center line. Um there was uh there was a um there was uh there was kind of one. An observation site, right. And um and that's that's where kind of a lot of the the kind of the special cabling had been put in um for the internet and uh so yeah, actually just just south of X-Mouth for that one.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

And that is because because it was such a small area that got totality, those images. Um Stefan Paulson again, he calculated that a hundred million people saw our live stream from that eclipse. Um and it's it just is so motivating to to to share that with the world. Um so yeah, through through YouTube, through affiliations, like uh we work with with the big uh uh news organizations and and um reached out to so many people to see, to just inspire and and experience um a little because you know, we know who've been there, like in real life it's a whole different experience, but it is still very much special to watch, even on online, on a screen.

SPEAKER_04 26:28

That one was one of the most impressive eclipses I've ever seen because it was as the sun was climbing up toward its max to its more max, and then this was such a short eclipse, so the moon was just very tight around the sun. You got so many of the interesting phenomena out of that.

SPEAKER_03 26:48

It was the pointiest eclipse I've ever seen.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

The chromosphere was amazing, isn't it? Like just on both sides, you could see long strips of chromosphere of the pink, and I'd never seen that before with that much. That was fantastic. The brief ones are spectacular. Yeah. Yeah. So what are what are both of you what what is your favorite eclipse phenomenon?

SPEAKER_02 27:21

It's hard to choose, but for me it's the and there's a song reference for you, it's the black hole sun. Um it's it's that black hole in the sky, and it feels like someone's just poked a hole in the sky to the universe. And and it it for me that's just it's it's unlike anything you've ever seen. And and it's it's and I I go deep, like I go into like folklore and history and all the bits I can imagine experiencing that and just it going dark and looking up at the sky and seeing that the sun has turned into a black hole. Like it's just um and I just get shivers even talking about it because I just find it so special. So so and that's what totality like I I love lunar eclipses as well. Uh, but a total solar eclipse just has that kind of extremeness to it. It just tugs at you and makes you look at the world differently after you've been through one. So for me that's about you, Graham.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yeah, I am I'm actually uh I'm a first contact guy. Uh I I I always I I I always think that's uh that's so awesome when you know you just start to see that first little bite and you know you think, oh my gosh, like it really is it really is happening here today. Um and in fact, even I mean, even going before that, um, you know, in all the you know, in the days before a solar eclipse, you know, you have a lot of early mornings if you're if you're traveling to get on site, or um, you know, if you're if you're organizing things for a live stream. There's a lot of early mornings. And you know, that little crescent moon you get uh, you know, before dawn. Um, and you kind of think, hang on, that was there a few days before the last eclipse. And you think, oh, hang on, right, because it's uh Because it's a new moon. And I mean, and every time it just like kind of reminds you that uh, you know, it is uh it's a new moon. And even if you go back to the full moon two weeks before the eclipse, it's it's actually lovely to look up at that full moon and to think, okay, well, I I mean what you mentioned earlier, Chris. I mean, these things are these things are deadlines. And so, I mean, there's your there's your two-week deadline. And um Anna, Anna has a nice description for it.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Are you setting me up? I call it the egg timer in the sky. Um you look, you look at the moon and then it just you just see it, you like know every night, okay. It's closer to to D-Day, right? Like using another reference there, but but it's just it just gets closer and closer to to the moment where we have to perform while experiencing something so intense at the same time. And and I it sharpens me, that egg timer in the sky. And yeah, and normally we have to do it all over again because we if if there's a if there's a an okay lunar eclipse coming with that solar eclipse, we're back on two weeks later, and we just have to regroup and re and and get everything back on together. And so we have to keep two thoughts in our head at the same time. And yeah, so that's also another timer that don't batch up into the full moon again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:45

Well that's back to that's the one thing about the eclipse is that it just it's all this wonderful orbital mechanics that you you study, you hear about, that grew up with, and everything else. And then all of a sudden you see a total solar eclipse or even a lunar eclipse, and you just it's the math just comes into your soul. I feel the math. And then the wonder of the math. I feel all. The math is driving all this. The orbital mechanics.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it it is, I mean, when when we I mean, going back to the uh the study that we did on eclipse frequencies, I mean, it it is remarkable because when you look at a map of eclipses over a decade or so, I mean, you know, you sort of get these, you know, they're pretty much random slashes across the globe that I mean that's what's so cool about eclipses, that they appear so random. And it's why they take you such amazing places to go and see them. But then when you look at things over hundreds of years or thousands of years, uh, you know, it is remarkable how these things do fall into a pattern and how you can produce these, you know, incredibly neat graphs showing how frequency varies with latitude that, you know, give you these incredibly smooth lines and tell a very clear story, which you just don't get when you look uh, you know, at an eclipse map for a few years, because it really, you know, it it you know, on that scale, it really is random. But on a on a larger scale, um, like you say, Letitia, I mean the maths, there is so much maths in these things. It's uh it's wonderful.

SPEAKER_03 32:31

Well, one of the things I love about what Fred did on his website was the solar sorrow for each eclipse. The little map he'd do, those were just you could just watch the eclipse climb up or climb down below.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

The Google map of the entire soros series, where it goes through, it shows you the first partial from 1500 years ago or whatever, and then it goes through and shows every eclipse in that sorrow series all the way to the last one, if it's ascending or descending. So it'll show 30 something eclipses, but it puts them all together in a Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

And you start you right, you start off with like the small partial at one of the poles, right? Sort of comes down and then it turns into a total eclipse or an annular eclipse. And uh I mean those things are those things are are amazing. And again, it's a it is just wonderful to see how these patterns just fall out of something that sometimes just looks so random.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Um puts that whole sorrow thing together. It's like what are you talking about? You know, sorrow cycle, you know, 18 years and and then you see the whole thing and it's like aha. And then that one's some of them have them have more as it's so complex. It's right. It's amazing how complex it is. But uh, we had our new moon less than 12 hours ago. So we got two more. Two more and it's we're there. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

Oh, you just put that into perspective.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Two more flights in 30 days. If you're um if you're interested in the in how the uh Seros cycles evolved, I mean that's a that's a beautiful thing that runs over what 12 centuries or so. Um we could uh we could mention uh uh a very beautiful pattern in eclipses that runs over about 21,000 years. Um this was um this was something else that uh we we looked into when we were doing our frequency calculation. Um that at the moment um there are more total eclipses in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere. And there's more annular eclipses in the southern hemisphere than in the northern hemisphere. Uh and it's all to do with the timing of the seasons. So you get the you get the most eclipses in summer because that's when you have the most daylight. It's when the sun is above the horizon the most. You get the fewest eclipses in winter because the sun simply isn't above the horizon as much. And at the moment, in the northern hemisphere, aphelion, the point where Earth is at its furthest point from the sun, that's happening around the beginning of July, which is, you know, pretty closely aligned with the with the June solstice and the northern hemisphere summer. So if if Earth is a little bit further away from the sun, then the sun is just a tiny bit smaller in the sky. And so it's just a little bit easier for the moon to completely cover it and give us a total eclipse. Kind of the other way around in the southern hemisphere, because uh uh perihelion, where Earth is at its closest to the sun, that's happening around the beginning of January. That's the southern hemisphere summer. If Earth is closer to the Sun, the the Sun is a bit bigger, so you get a slightly higher chance of there being an annular eclipse where the moon can't quite cover the whole sun. So we kind of see that we get slightly more total eclipses in the northern hemisphere at the moment. But if you look over very long time periods, then the dates of aphelion and perihelion, they're kind of slowly shifting through the calendar. So if we jump forward in time by around 9,000 years, then the situation has reversed. Yeah. And uh, you know, we have aphelion is coinciding with the southern hemisphere summer, and uh perihelion's coinciding with the northern hemisphere summer. So the thing is reversed. We get in 9,000 years' time, we'll get slightly more total eclipses in the southern hemisphere, and slightly more annular eclipses in the northern hemisphere. And yeah, it is again, it's it's it's amazing when you look at data over really long time frames. You just kind of see these amazing sort of patterns and cycles.

SPEAKER_04 37:37

Um That's so you did so what was your base that you what was the base you were doing? You said 21,000 years, and earlier you said you did 12,000 years for the what was the base of calculations that you did?

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Uh yeah, so we took we took 15,000 years of data. So we didn't we didn't quite take the full 21,000 year cycle, but within that cycle we could we could you know really nicely see how the balance between the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere, kind of how that uh you know slowly changed as the dates of aphelion and perihelion kind of slowly shifted uh through the calendar. So it was uh yeah, kind of a it was a nice uh sort of uh confirmation of a of a really long-term cycle in a collection.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

That's our procession, the procession of the elliptical orbit of Earth around the Sun. That's essentially what's creating that? Is that correct? Or is that is that an odd way off base there?

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Aaron Ross Powell Uh Yeah. So this one is uh this one is really how um aphelion and perihelion are uh kind of aligning with solstices and equinoxes. So it's it's more how the uh how the elliptical um bit of Earth's orbit, how that's uh yeah, slowly shifting around in this over this. It's it's one of those very long-term cycles that we see.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

That shift happens pretty quickly, and it's much easier to observe in a lifetime for a human being.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean I mean the with the moon, we we get all these I mean, all of these cycles. Uh you know, I mean the uh the apogeepere, right? We cycle through that every month as opposed to every year. Yeah, all of the everything with the moon happens a lot more quickly.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

I'm gonna share this um animated gif of the uh sorrows 126, the one that we have coming up.

SPEAKER_05 39:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

And I'll put a link in the show notes for those who are just listening. But um yeah, NASA has these uh on there. But it's really cool to go through all the older eclipses. But you you get to see the uh the ascending and descending aspects of it. And it's amazing how it stays in the middle for so long, and then towards the end of the cycle, of the beginning of the cycle, they're at the polls and it happens rather quickly. Can y'all see that?

SPEAKER_00 40:23

Yeah, yeah. See it. See it. Yeah, we're enjoying this. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

Definitely fun to go back and check on those. What you got next?

SPEAKER_04 40:36

Please keep up your articles on the moon and everything else that you're doing astronomical. They're wonderful to read they're wonderful. And are you writing most of those? Or do you have collaborators?

SPEAKER_02 40:47

So we've got we've got a we've got an uh editorial team here. We uh how many six, five? I'm not good with numbers. I'm very visual person with six people, right? We are yeah, and and it's mostly um, it has been mostly Graham and I doing doing um astronomy stuff. I've been writing a lot about um moon. I write our a monthly moon guide, which uh we get a lot of positive responses on. Um we like to write for the man in the street, as we as we this is a very Norwegian expression, and and to just look up and and see. And and and my mission in life is to be able to let people just look up and see and say, think about what moon phase it is, and think about what planet is hanging out next to the moon, and and and and are there some bright stars or some constellations that that are recognizable and and uh to be able to just feel confident that that the sky is there with you, if that makes sense. Um it it really, really grew on me. Um instead of feeling like it's this big vast expanse of of um stuff that I wouldn't understand, uh, to to make it bite-size, I like to say, and and to to inspire, to just and and and the moon is such a good um reference point that everybody can see. Um and and so when when you can say that Venus is hanging hanging out next to the crescent moon, you can really kind of it's it's easy and it's it's recognizable and and uh obviously Mars is awesome hanging out next to the moon and just explaining, you know, people can notice that it's it's got that slight red tint and and and yeah, so so for me it's it's that kind of getting people excited about these things all year, not just for the eclipses, though the eclipses are amazing.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

Like the last week or the last few weeks and Venus and Jupiter out together right now. Yes, it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 42:43

And right far north here in in in Norway where we are, we don't we don't have nighttime at the moment. We only have twilight, and this is even on the we're even quite far south in Norway. So for us, it's it's all about the light at the moment and the quality of the light, and and we do celebrate midsummer, so we're looking forward to to the solstice, um, and and it's it's a celebration of of light. We light fires, bonfires, and and uh pig flowers and and and go all um fairy and feral. Um and it's it's such a wonderful part of of our culture because we we live with the light and we live with the darkness. Um yeah. So uh Graham calls it de facto midnight sun. It's not midnight sun, but you go to bed when it's light and you get up when it's light, like it's a snow. Um you have to stay up all night to notice that it gets a little bit dark.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

So uh do you get Venus at all? Are you able to see Venus at all? Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

Well you have to you have to really you have to be you have to be out like three o'clock in the morning. Yeah, that kind of time to be able to pick it up. So at the moment we have I have no connection to the planets. This is all the sun. The sun is there with me. So uh yeah, that's uh that's how it is to live. That's this far north.

SPEAKER_05 43:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:59

But you guys get Great, you're and you've been getting the great, I guess we can't see them right now, but uh Auroras.

SPEAKER_02 44:06

Yes. We've had some wonderful auroras, and it's been it's been I've just been out walking the dog and and just kind of looking up at all there's some and oh there's some so it's like been really but then when the solar storms hit I make sure to go to places where I can look north and it's dark and I just tell all my friends and and some of them do turn up, but it's it's been it's almost turned into a common sight. Um so they're a bit oh Aurora again. Um and I'm like do you know about solar max? This is it. This so um yeah, it's it's just yeah, I'm I'm I'm that annoying friend, and that makes everybody go outside and get cold. Um, but yeah, it's good.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

Well, on that solar max, Graham, can you give us an update? Where are we at with cycle 25? It just seems like a very a unique cycle. And I'm just kind of curious if we're done yet and if we're moving out of it. And you know, what what's your what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Yeah, well, I mean, it's always curious with these solar cycles that we never we never get the confirmation that we're past max and you know, until we are well past max. Um, because yeah, there is all that uh that statistical um bit that has to be done to confirm, you know, where the max actually was. But I mean I I think we clearly are on our way down from max now, and we are just kind of waiting for that for that confirmation. But I mean, fingers crossed, uh you know, we I I I mean, as we've just been saying, I mean, we you know, we've been having some some uh some some great solar activity recently. So it's I mean it's very much uh fingers crossed for something very nice on the sun um for this uh for this August eclipse.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

We should have some good active corona. Definitely a minimum type, we'll have a solar max type corona, it seems like. Lots of sunspots and activities and well fingers crossed. Yeah, fingers crossed, clear skies.

SPEAKER_04 46:24

And also uh which one is it now? Anna, you have to keep your eye uh the same day as the eclipse, we should be having a good meteor storm.

SPEAKER_02 46:33

Yes. So the Perseids that are racing are yeah, around that time. So if we're lucky, we can see a lot of stuff. Um you know we're gonna be distracted by that big black hole in the sky.

SPEAKER_04 46:48

Well, some events I know that there's some events in Spain where they're planning on okay, see the eclipse here, turn around, see the the meteor showers right behind you.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

Yeah, we're at sundown, and a lot of those places are dark skies. We'd interviewed uh a couple people from Spain, and they're like, there's dark skies everywhere in the in this area. So yeah, true.

SPEAKER_02 47:11

It's gonna be a good chance to see see the Perseus because because of new moon. So after the eclipse is gonna be awesome that evening. So it's definitely worth just staying outside after sunset and and making sure that you see the see the media shower as well. It's uh one of the most prolific ones of the year. So uh and again, one of those that comes on a bright side, a bright time of year in in in Norway. So you have to be up late to to be able to see it. So uh I'm happy to be in Spain for this one.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

And of course, the fact that the uh that the eclipse is happening so late in the day, um it's it's not it's not difficult to to to make it until sunset because I mean it it is all happening around the same time. I mean, one of the actually one of the one of the issues that's being looked at in Spain, I mean, is the question of you know, what happens after the eclipse when you have some of these big official observation sites. Um, you know, the eclipse happens and then the the sun goes down and it starts to get dark. Um, you know, thinking about illumination for people as they're leaving some of these sites, that's um yeah, that's one of the things that that a that a bit of planning has had to go into um for some of the official sites in Spain.

SPEAKER_04 48:26

That's that's gonna be a challenge for everybody because a lot I know the areas that we're gonna be in is little two-lane roads. Well, there's a two-lane road and a three-way, so I'll have two different sites to go out, but I'm pretty sure we're probably gonna be off track even from that.

SPEAKER_01 48:42

I never worry about traffic on the way out. It's always a big smile stuck in traffic. Who cares? We just saw totality, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

Bring some warm clothes, bring some snacks, and just chill out and let everybody rush out and then watch the watch the media shower instead.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

What is a common eclipse myth that uh you feel obligated to debunk uh when you're doing your live stream?

SPEAKER_02 49:11

Or in general. That's that's they're rare. They're not that rare. Um if you want to if you're willing to travel, Letisha, did you say 21 eclipses? You know, if you're willing to travel, you can see a lot. Um and there are partial eclipses and there are annular eclipses and there are lunar eclipses, and and and um I just encourage everyone to just look up and and and see what you can see. Like I keep telling um in Norwegian media here, you know, 85% eclipse, that's a lot. You know, wear your glasses and you can see the moon eat away at the sun and the sun will look like a crescent moon. Like it's amazing. So so um it's not that rare because you just need a little bit of information and to put yourself in the right place at the right time.

SPEAKER_00 50:03

Very good. Very good.

SPEAKER_05 50:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:08

I I I think if if if I was uh in the uh Eclipse myth debunking um area, um I I actually I mean interestingly, I mean for uh for a website um whose business is is calculating eclipses, um I mean one one interesting thing is that there are difficulties in exactly predicting eclipses in the future. I mean, you know, looking ahead, um, you know, we can produce eclipse maps and timings that you know are completely reliable and you know will completely get you into totality and and tell you the timings to all the accuracy that you need. But there are uncertainties. And I mean I I I always think the most interesting uncertainty with predicting eclipses into the future uh is the the speed of Earth's rotation. Um because when we look more than a few years ahead, it actually becomes really difficult to predict exactly how fast Earth is going to be rotating. It goes up and down a little bit every day. And it's actually the biggest uncertainty that there is in eclipse calculations. When you look at some eclipse calculation, um, if you go to one of our pages or you know, if you look in in textbooks, um you you might see a little figure called delta T, which is this um technically speaking, it's the difference between terrestrial time and universal time. It's the difference between time according to atomic clocks, which is just super reliable and never changes, and time according to Earth's rotation, which does go up and down in kind of unpredictable ways. And you know, you kind of think, well, that's all quite theoretical, but it is interesting, you don't actually have to go back very far to start seeing some interesting differences. Um if we take the eclipse coming up in August, for example, um, we know that it just misses the center of Madrid, but it does hit some parts of eastern Madrid. So we can take a district in eastern Madrid, like um Barajas, um, which is uh that's the district, it's where the airport is, the big international airport, um, Barajas. And we can take the central square in Barajas, the Plaza Mayor de Barajas, and we can ask the question: will it get totality on August 12th? Now we don't have to go back very far to get a different answer. If we go back to um 1987, um, that's when uh Fred Espinach published his uh his uh famous 50-year canon of solar eclipses. And at the at the time then, he took a delta T value of 88.0 seconds. That was based on you know all the available information and based on exactly how we thought Earth's rotation was going to develop in the coming years. When we do the calculation now for the eclipse in August, we're using a delta T value of 69.6 seconds. It's actually been quite a shift. In recent years, Earth has been rotating a lot more quickly than we expected it would back in the 1980s. And if Earth is rotating more quickly than you think, when the moon's shadow hits the earth, then the shadow is going to be, you know, uh it's gonna be in a different position w as Earth rotates more quickly. And you know, when we look at the actual difference that it makes, you know, it's it's it's shifting the path of totality on the map in an east-west direction by around about four miles or six and a half kilometers. So you know, the very edge of the path of totality, you know, over decades, it you know, it can actually move. And so uh you know, based on based on the on the delta T value that uh that Fred Esparnach was using back in the 1980s, the answer to um, you know, will Barajas get totality, the answer was no. It would just miss it. It would just get a very, very deep partial eclipse. Um but in fact, when August comes around and the eclipse happens, um then the answer is yes. And the the central square of Barajas will actually get about 10 seconds of totality. Um it's it's kind of gained totality um over the last uh uh 40 years or so. Um yeah, I think that's uh that's a that's kind of an eclipse myth that we can you know predict these things perfectly into the future. And again, for all practical purposes, we can. You know, and you know, if you're ever on the edge of the path of totality, uh you know it's it's it's always better to be a little bit into the path of totality just to make sure. Um but um yeah, that's uh that's that's something that I think always people always enjoy.

unknown 55:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:47

I mean we should we shouldn't say they got it wrong, of course. I mean they were using the best available estimate uh at the time. I mean it's the it's the earth's fault. I mean it's it's just it's been it's been rotating faster than we thought. So um yeah, I mean don't don't blame Fred Ethnik. I mean, it's the it's the Earth's the Earth is to blame uh here.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

Yeah, I was thinking at the very when we were doing the questions, it's like I don't want to ask any gotcha questions, but uh the first one I came up with, what is time? You guys know the time and date, guys. Well, you did a great job of describing what is time. All right, well, hey, thank you so much. This has been great. Uh this has been very much.

SPEAKER_02 56:34

Thank you. It's been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 56:36

Yeah, and I hope you guys have a wonderful trip and um hopefully we'll touch base. Uh you too. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:42

I'll live stream after.

SPEAKER_01 56:46

Yes. I'll be out there tuning into the live stream. Well, yeah. Well, that's it for this episode of Totality Talks. Hope you enjoyed our chat with Ann Ann Graham. In the next episode, we talk to veteran meteorologist and sky watching columnist Joe Raya. As always, clear skies.