Comment on why did the eclipse not darken proportionally?
Beryl@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think it has to do with atmospheric diffusion of the sunlight. Even if the photons coming straight down at you are blocked by the moon, a lot of them bounce around in the atmosphere and end up reaching your eyes. Kinda like when it’s not complete darkness at sunset even after the sun has gone over the horizon.
fubbernuckin@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is not it, because if you look at the range of what is in shadow, it is significantly larger than the portion of the sky that you can see. If you could see that far, people in more of a 50% zone would be able to see the sky darken significantly in one direction and be bright in another. What we saw instead was the entire sky darkening evenly.
The real answer lies mostly in our logarithmic perception of light, meaning that we’re much more sensitive to the absolute change in amount of light when there’s less light than when there’s a lot. So the difference between 100% bright and 50% bright is a lot smaller to us than 50% bright and 0% bright.
Beryl@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You’re probably right, I have edited my comment to reflect this.
fubbernuckin@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This article actually talks about how your eyes adjust during an eclipse, which is a bit different from what i was talking about, but also likely just as important.