Eclipse Impressions

Recently I traveled more than halfway across the American continent to view the “Great American Eclipse” of 2017. I chose to travel from Virginia to the state of Wyoming, because it had an excellent chance of experiencing clear skies during the event. We also have friends out there who set us up with a superb viewing location.

For several months prior to the eclipse I did lots of research, in order to better appreciate the event. This Great American Eclipse promised a unique experience. The eclipse path would travel diagonally across the country, right through its middle. I bought the requisite solar eclipse viewing glasses—which allow you to stare directly at the sun, without frying your eyeballs. I also bought a filter of the same material, to place over the lens of my camera to allow photos. I was ready!

I was aware of the fact that viewing a solar eclipse requires one to be gazing at the sun for about three hours, as the Moon first begins to block the sun, until it again exits the scene, leaving behind a full sun again. Those three hours sandwich less than three minutes of totality—when the Moon fully covers the sun. So you patiently wait for well over an hour for totality to finally occur, and then experience a darkened sky for only a couple of minutes. It all happens just too quickly.

So I prepared well. I was ready with camera, with charts describing the event's timing, and with past eclipse stories in mind—all very objective kinds of preparations. What I was not prepared for was the emotional experience. I knew from my research that to witness a total solar eclipse was a very subjective and moving experience. All Earth's creatures expect to continually sense the sun's rays all day long, and then to experience several hours of nighttime, until the sun reappears in the morning. It's a pattern we come to presume is always there. But if the sun is suddenly turned off for a couple of minutes in the middle of the day, we become disoriented. We emotionally respond.

It is hard to describe the feelings that came over me at totality. I wish, like Joshua, I could have stopped the sun in its tracks for a couple of hours, in order to have more fully soaked up the emotions. It's over far too quickly. All you have time for is to be amazed and dazzled by the sight in that brief time frame. It's truly the experience of a lifetime.

One interesting reaction that endures for me, a few weeks later, is that the Moon I saw eclipsing the sun that day was an alien moon. I am quite a Moon freak. For most of my life I've been fascinated by the Moon. I gaze at it at length. I follow its phases through the month. I've photographed it many times. I've come to have an intimate relationship with it. I have written about it several times in this blog.

But the eclipsing Moon I saw on 21 August 2017 was not my Moon. It did not have the varied features and contrasting topography that my Moon does. It was not gray or orange. It did not shine brilliantly like on a dark night—when it illuminates my pathway through the woods. The eclipsing Moon was a black circle that slowly obliterated the sun. It seemed to be a two-dimensional disk—a flat circle without features. It did its job and then it was gone! The renewed brilliant sun banished it from the sky. Fortunately, a few nights later I once again spotted my old, familiar Moon—now a thin, bright crescent that I knew would soon wax into a round, brilliant, orange-gray ball, that would dominate the night sky, in a few more nights. My Moon will be back!