No Shadow Bands 2024
In 2017 Christine dragged me on the Katy Trail near St. Louis to see the eclipse. We were not in the totality. The first effect I noticed was the sickling. People were making pinhole viewers with blades of grass or a circle with thumb and forefinger. Sickling, the crescent moon shadow, was everywhere. The next was shadow bands. The sickling turned off and shadow bands, alternations of light and dark, appeared on the ground. They were straight and went on forever. Towards maximum darkness, and stillness, the shadow bands clicked off and then reappeared on the other side of the eclipse. Then the bands turned off and sickling reappeared. The shadow bands did not move. I don’t know if their position was the same on both sides of the eclipse. I had not heard of shadow bands before. Shadow bands are an interference pattern. An interference pattern occurs when a light is split, and then subsequent two slits create a wave interference pattern. The question is where the interference com...