Totally Awesome
If you haven't yet experienced a total solar eclipse, go chase the next one. It is worth it.
In the summer of 2017, on a whim, I flew from Boston to Chicago and then drove four hours south to Carlyle, IL to chase a total eclipse of the Sun. I had witnessed a partial one as a child, which was fun and interesting enough, but not something that could have justified flying across the country. I would not have travelled were it not for the opportunity to spend a few days with the family that had hosted me as an exchange student twenty years prior. Seeing my host family after two decades and revisiting fond memories from my year abroad was the main point of the trip. The eclipse was supposed to be just the icing on the cake.
It was a beautiful summer day in Southern Illinois. We were all gathered in the backyard where a long stretch of lawn on a gentle hill gave us an uninterrupted view of the cloudless sky. There was barbeque, pool, and games. Then it started. First, an almost imperceptible fading of brightness as the Moon slowly enveloped the Sun. Odd shadows could be seen on the ground all around us, as the crescent-shaped Sun shined through the trees. Then, the sky quickly darkened, stars came out, and the temperature dropped. An eerie silence set in. Where the Sun was supposed to be, there was a black orb encircled by a radiant white crown. For two magical minutes it was like the world had stopped. I felt goosebumps all over and then, out of nowhere — something I was completely unprepared for, — tears started streaming down. It was a celestial spectacle like nothing else I had ever seen, just pure awe and wonder. I was overrun by the knowledge that we are standing on a spinning rock flying through space. That was a special moment in my life.
Yesterday, like millions of others, I went chasing the Moon’s shadow once again as I drove north to a small town in Vermont to place myself in the path of totality. Ordinarily, if you asked me how good an event lasting 105 seconds would have to be to make it worthwhile braving big crowds, long queues, and several hours of traffic jams, I would say it would have to be pretty fucking fantastic. Well, the universe rarely disappoints.
The total solar eclipse phenomenon on Earth is a product of a fortunate set of cosmic circumstances. The Sun is about 400 times larger in diameter but also 400 times further away than the Moon, which creates an effect where both appear to be roughly the same size to us. This size and distance ratio allows the Moon to completely cover the Sun, revealing the corona, its outer atmosphere. It is a kind of sight not possible anywhere else in our solar system. It might even be rare throughout the cosmos, to the extent that anything can be rare in an infinite universe.
This near-perfect alignment that graces a small stretch of the Earth’s surface every few years is also fleeting, on a geological timescale. The Moon is gradually moving away from us at the rate of a few centimeters per year. Over millions of years, this will make total solar eclipses as we know them today impossible, as the Moon will appear too small to completely cover the Sun. We live in a unique window of cosmic time.
In the days following August 21, 2017, and again today, I find myself searching for words, incapable of describing the experience of watching a total eclipse to someone who has never seen one. Many people got to see a partial eclipse at some point in their lives, as I had, and that memory is what they recall. Hunting for eclipse glasses, making a pinhole camera, looking up at a crescent-shaped Sun for a few minutes, then getting bored and going about the day. Meaning: a cool event; not quite underwhelming, but certainly not mind-blowing. But a total eclipse is an altogether different thing, even compared to a 99% one.
T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, acutely aware of his inconsequentiality in the grand scheme of things and fearing a life lived without significance or fulfillment, wondered if it would have been worthwhile “To have squeezed the universe into a ball / To roll it towards some overwhelming question.” Although a deep connection with the cosmos was not the point of the poem, when looking up at the sky yesterday it did feel like the universe had very much been squeezed into a ball, and the whole thing was in full display right there in front of me.
Once you witness the arguably most unique image that nature has to offer, the memory of a raw and wondrous feeling of belonging in the universe will be with you for the rest of your life. A total solar eclipse should absolutely be on your bucket list. Luckily, there’s one every few years somewhere on the planet. If you haven’t yet had the privilege and are at all able to, pick one, plan ahead, and go savor it.