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| Total Solar Eclipse - August 21, 2017 |
Vivid Hypnagogic Hallucinations
I recently discovered there was a name for this and I’m not the only one to have this happen. From Wikipedia “Hypnagogia is the experience of the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep in humans: the hypnagogic state of consciousness, during the onset of sleep. Mental phenomena that occur during this "threshold consciousness" phase include lucid thought, lucid dreaming, hallucinations, and sleep paralysis.” There are different types of images that can be seen but they are described as “Individual images are typically fleeting and given to very rapid changes.” I have seen two type of images in this state. Faces and mathematical/physics notebook pages. For me the images are in black and white. I typically dream in black and white, it’s really more like gray and grayer in a heavy fog. This makes the vivid images even more strange to me. The faces appear like they are drawn with a pencil. The crazy thing is how fast they change. I see each one for just a fraction of a second and then it is instantly replaced by another. All different kinds of faces; men, women, children, elderly, friendly and unfriendly. I never recognize any of the faces as someone I know. I am not completely asleep when this happens and I’m conscious enough to think about what’s happening. I can’t believe something in my brain is generating all these faces so quickly. I can’t control it. Can’t slow it down. Can’t stop it. The first few times this happened it scared me because I thought I might see something I did’t want to see. The only thing I could do to stop it was to somehow find the ability to open my eyes (it wasn’t easy). I’ve never seen anything scary so now I just enjoy the show until I slip into sleep. The other kind I see is what I can only describe as pages of math and physics homework or notebooks. They are pages with mathematical equations and physics diagrams. Like the faces they rapidly change. I can’t close my eyes and consciously visualize anything like it. Not even one static image. Of course it doesn’t happen all the time just once in a while so when it does I just enjoy it. It blows my mind to be seeing these images that are generated in my head and yet I can’t control or stop it.
Rain drops in the ocean
I’ve seen many amazing things while scuba diving that could make this list. Rain is probably not on anyone’s list of things to see while diving. It wasn’t on mine. At the end of a dive in Palau I could see it was raining during the safety stop and that looked pretty cool to look up and see the many ripples on the surface spreading out from each rain drop. However it was when I got to the surface that was really memorable. It was raining big drops but not very heavy so there was plenty of space between the drops. When I surfaced I floated so my mask was partly above water and partly below. The surface was calm. It seemed I could see forever across the sea. The raindrops hit the water and formed the classical splash and the rebound drop of water shooting up from the surface. Maybe it was the magnification of the scuba mask but the drops and splashes seemed huge. I recently saw a video by Paul Nicklen that shows rain from this perspective (with the addition of a crocodile): https://vimeo.com/256797730
Snow from airplane with strobe
One night I was flying into Salt Lake City when we flew through a snow flurry. There was a light on the wing that illuminated the snowflakes in front of the wing. Due to the speed of the plane the snowflakes appeared as white horizontal streaks. There was also a strobe light on the wing that flashed about every second. The strobe was fast enough to visually freeze the snowflakes in place for a fraction of a second. Visually there were horizontal white streaks of snow and once every second they would all stand perfect still just long enough to perceive it then they would blur again. I may not have describe it very well but it was a memorable illusion.
Bioluminescence
Once on a business trip to Puerto Rico I planned to visit a nearby bioluminescence bay. I was with 3 others from work but I rented the car. I told them where I planned to go and said they could come along if they liked. They all chose to go with me. I didn’t know much about the tour just that we would get on a boat and go see it. It was a small boat that was near capacity with about 12 people total. It was a warm dark evening with no moon. The boat ride was about 30 minutes. As we approached the bioluminescence bay we could begin to see flashes of light in the boat’s wake. Then the wake began to glow greenish blue. When the boat came to a stop a few of the locals began stripping down to their underwear to jump in. I didn’t know this was optional but I quickly made one of the best impromptu decision I’ve ever made. I handed my wallet to a coworker and said I’m going in. I stripped down to my underwear, stepped up to the edge of the boat and dove in head first. It was very dark and I couldn’t see the water when I jumped but as soon as I hit the water it exploded with green light. It was like I was swimming in a neon light. After what seemed like just a few seconds the tour guide was telling me and the others to get back in the boat (maybe it wasn’t an optional part of the tour). I wanted to stay in the water longer so swam around the boat before getting in. As I swam I could see individual dinoflagellates give off their tiny burst of light like flashing stars in a sea of neon green. Reluctantly I climbed into the boat and dried off in the warm breeze as the boat raced back to shore. I’ve not made it back to a bioluminescence bay yet but I hope to.
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| Annular Solar Eclipse - May 20, 2012 |
Annular solar eclipse a few years back was pretty cool to see but it was seen through filters and eclipse glasses. I once read that on a scale of 1 to 10 an annular solar eclipse is a 9 and a total solar eclipse is a 100. I agree. The total solar eclipse in August of 2017 was without a doubt the most amazing phenomenon I have ever seen. I had read about total eclipses and seen photos and videos but nothing was like seeing the real thing. I read some advice for photographers seeing their first eclipse that went something like this. “Don’t try to take any photos at all. Just take it all in.” I took this advice, sort of. I did try to take photos. I had two cameras setup one with a filter to capture the eclipse up to totality and one to take photos of totality. They were both set on interval mode so they were both taking photos the whole time and I didn’t need to touch the cameras. I just needed to remove the lens cap of the camera set to capture totality just before totality and put the lens cap back on just after totality. However, I had to guess at the settings needed for totality and I set it up to bracket the exposure incase my guess was off. It was off. Only the lowest exposure shots captured any detail but even in those much of the sun’s corona was blown out (just white, no detail). I’m so glad I didn’t try to get good photos of the total eclipse. If I’d tried to get everything right I would have been messing with my cameras the whole time and missed much of the experience of the eclipse. The brilliance and beauty of the sun’s corona is difficult to describe. I understand how people get hooked on chasing total solar eclipses.
