ArtieShaw

The One Grand Unified Force to Bind Them All… no, it’s a Star Wars joke.

That’s not OK

I have an at-home laser hair removal gun. It works best on dark hair and very pale skin because it uses the absorption of UV light to heat and kill the hair. It has a safety feature that makes you validate that “my skin is pale enough to use this” before it will turn on because it will burn anything dark. Hair, skin, whatever.

It won’t work on blond or white hair, and there’s no real workaround to that. Electrolysis is an option for light colored hair, but I think that’s more invasive. Not an option for me, so I haven’t looked into it.

Celestron is a name I know and would trust. My dad had one of their telescopes and it was pretty nice. That was in the '80s though.

If you can get to an area where it will be in totality, you can see it without eye protection during that brief 2-3 minute window. The danger to your eyes is when it’s at anything less than full total eclipse.

Workaround: You can see the eclipse with a low tech solution of a pinhole camera. Google it for a better explanation, but

-poke a pin through a sheet of paper. -during the eclipse, just hold it over something like another sheet of paper and you can see an accurate projection of the sun as the eclipse progresses

It’s actually pretty neat.

But if your weather is good, consider going to a place where the eclipse will be total. I’m in the path, but I’m seriously considering driving several hours to a place with a better weather forecast. I’ve seen good quality photo and video of total eclipses since I was a child. And the people who showed it to me (astronomy nerds from a club) told me “it’s not the same.”

Indeed. Too real.