It's the End of the World!!! – May 20, 2012

The Mayans got it totally wrong. The end of the world is today. TODAY. Apparently the sun will be blotted out and we will all die horribly and alone.

Oh wait.

This just in - it's only an annular eclipse. It has happened before and the world didn't end. Apparently I have been misinformed. And since imminent death is not at the door, we decided to trundle up to the foothills to see this fantastic natural phenomenon. Our city is front and center for this show.

Asher blazes the trail to a prime sun watching spot.

We weren't the only ones with this idea. A great many people scaled rocks to have a good view of this event. We found a good spot though and settled in for the long haul.

 

Armed with our homemade box viewers, we watched the slow progress of the moon across the blazing orb of the sun. It went pretty slow. Not exactly "action-packed drama" if you know what I mean.

But as annular eclipses only happen once in a great while, I thought it important for our family to bear witness to this celestial dance.

 

We couldn't really get a decent photo of the event because our camera couldn't handle the glare. But I found this picture that is pretty much how it looked through officially-approved heavily-tinted glasses:

And I found this other picture that is a super-cool time lapse of the event from the Sandia Crest. (To see more amazing pictures of the event, visit this guys' blog - he does a much better job of recording it than I do.)