By now, we have all seen and survived the great American solar eclipse of 2024. Survived as in not damaging our retinas, not surviving some zombie apocalypse predicted in MAGA-world. There are some great pics of the eclipse out there in the Internet, here are a few special ones.
The pic on the left of the total solar eclipse was taken from the city of Mazatlán on the west coast of Mexico, the first city in N. America to observe the total eclipse. Also shown is a shot of the pilot aboard one of two NASA WB-57 Canberra high-altitude research aircraft which were chasing the eclipse yesterday, equipped with a host of hi-tech instruments to study the Sun’s corona. They were flying at 500+ mph at 50,000 feet, high above the clouds and the crowds.
The 2nd screenshot from the NASA webcast shows the scene looking out of the window of the WB-57.
This the flight path of one of the WB-57s, which took off from Ellington Field near NASA JSC in Houston, flew SW to the Mexican coast and then turned around and tracked the total eclipse for over 6 minutes. The other one departed from El Paso and landed at Ellington Field.
NASA operates these 3 surviving WB-57s for high altitude research. The WB-57s were built in the 1960s and used by the USAF until they were retired in 1974.
Here is another set of high-quality images from the NASA webcast yesterday. These beautiful pics were taken from the ground in the city of Torreón in Mexico. . The Baily's beads can be seen prominently in the first pic.
This stunning pic with prominences shooting out from the Sun was taken in Dallas, Texas by NASA photographer Keegan Barber.
Now let’s set our eyes on today’s puzzle composed in 1918 by noted Argentinian chess composer Arnoldo Ellerman (1893 - 1969). It features a lot of chess “eclipses”.
P.S.
The chess puzzle is published on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. ET.
It is customary for advanced players to wait till midnight ET before posting the full solution. Before then, they provide some stats about the solution (e.g., the minimum number of distinct checkmate moves), help guide others, and sometimes post hints. But there are no hard-and-fast rules; feel free to post comments as you please.