Submitted 7 months ago by GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
I was in ~80% zone. It wasn’t 80% darker. It was maybe 25% darker.
We searching that phrase just gives me times and such.
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.
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.
You’re probably right, I have edited my comment to reflect this.
Without looking for sources - so I could be totally wrong - I believe that it did darken proportionately and that light meters would register that. However, human eyes are not light meters and adjust to the dimmer light without you knowing.
My guess is that it’s related to the Weber-Fechner laws of perception. This is the same principle that explains why turning a second light on doesn’t make a room seem twice as bright.
I’ve never heard of this law. Very interesting, thanks for sharing.
I was in the path of totality.
It wasn’t dark like the middle of the night. It was dark like the sun was just about to dip under the horizon.
same, it was like it was dawn all around.
Yeah it was crazy having a “sunrise” all across the horizon instead of just one location. There was only about 5 minutes of noticably darker lighting before and after the totality. Other than that, i would have had no idea the moon was transiting the sun if i hadn’t spent an hour watching it go across.
I don’t believe that we perceive luminance in a linear fashion, but the systems of measurement aren’t straightforward coming at it as a layperson.
With sound, a 10 dB increase is 10 times more intense, but it doesn’t sound 10 times louder to the human ear - it sounds (roughly) twice as loud. So if something was 6 dB quieter (1/4th as energetic), it would sound maybe 2/3rds as loud.
The next things to ask are:
Our eyes are evolved to detect a high range of brightness's so we experience brightness on a logarithmic scale not a linear one.
I was in totality, but it did not get totally dark. It was more like a sunset in every direction. The sky on the horizon is much further away than the area of the eclipse zone, and it is still getting hit by the sun.
You’re just thinking visible light. There was almost no infrared in my 75% zone. Usually the sun is very warm out in the open (we’re at high altitude) but during the eclipse it was out but felt like I was in a shadow.
I regret to inform you that the moon is not an IR filter.
Because light moves in waves, not lines.
My guess is something to do with the atmosphere reflecting light. If you look at a lightbulb then block the line of sight with your hand, the room is still lit up even if you can’t see the bulb.
The atmosphere refracts light, there’s still a lot of air being hit by light and being scattered around. The colours scattered most are blueish, aka sky blue
To echo Beryl, light is a wave.
palebluethought@lemmy.world 7 months ago
In addition to what others said, the way you perceive light intensity is not linear. Between your eye adjusting to changing light levels and just the way your brains visual centers work, it’s closer to logarithmic. Indoor lighting at night probably feels like, what, 10% of the brightness of daylight? In reality it’s less than 1%, sometimes closer to 0.1%.