5 Things You Shouldn’t Do During the Eclipse

Don’t be these people…

1. Bang on about the vastness of space and futility of life

Listen, it’s a partial solar eclipse. Yes, pretty cool, but you’re not high on mushrooms. No one wants to listen to your amateur take on the cosmos and how we’re all mere specks of dust clinging desperately to a tiny rock hurtling through space. Just take it all in, then look at your watch and exclaim it’s time you headed to Tesco. Leave the existential dread talk to next time you’re tripping balls at Glastonbury festival.

2. Stare at the sun with a colander over your face

Yeah, you heard on BBC Points West that you can use a colander to see the eclipse, but you weren’t listening properly and now think putting a colander over your face creates some magic forcefield protecting you from the sun’s UV rays. It doesn’t. Not only will you look like some really crap alien from a 1960s Doctor Who episode, you’ll also go blind.

3. Spend the entire time trying to capture the “ultimate photo”

Capturing memories are great. But we’ll let you in on a secret… any photo of the eclipse taken on your Samsung Galaxy phone is going to be pretty shit. Even in pro mode. It’s a pretty rare event, and do you really want to spend the entire 90 seconds of it arguing with your phone’s autofocus? If you have a £15,000 astrophotography rig, have at it. But damaging your phone because you didn’t realise you need a solar snap filter attached – just to get an awful photo that’s identical to millions of others about to pop up on social media – really isn’t going to be worth it. Snap a photo of you and your clique on the ground and then just steal one of NASA’s images and claim it as your own like a normal person.

4. Explain to everyone what an eclipse is

The solar eclipse isn’t your moment to begin your own personal TED talk because you’ve just learned what the word “umbra” means. You’re not Brian Cox, and besides, everyone’s probably seen the same 2-minute YouTube videos you have. Leave your narration of basic orbital mechanics to ‘never’.

5. Raise expectations

It’s definitely worth a watch, but you have to set realistic expectations. Be prepared for the fact that during peak totality, it’s going to get rather gloomy, and the temperature is going to drop by about 2 degrees. Which is to say, the UK is going to become… slightly more like the UK. If you’re expecting celestial halos burning through the heavens, birds plummeting from the trees in existential panic and sacrificial goat bloodletting on the green patch outside Sainsburys, you’re probably going to leave somewhat disappointed by it all.