Eclipse Chasing, April 8 2024
Apr. 17th, 2024 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ratbonesLast week, my mom and I drove a bit more than four hours to see the solar eclipse in Ohio. I've had this eclipse in my calendar for almost a decade, but still just kind of ignored booking somewhere to stay until barely a month ahead. Luckily we did manage to find a place, an Airbnb in a small suburb with no other attractions, for a decent price. And while I can see the appeal of going to the shore of Lake Erie or somewhere else with a big party, I am not a crowds girl myself, so ending up in kind of a nothingsville was fine. That's something I love about astronomy. You don't have to be somewhere special. You just look up.
We got there Sunday night and didn't do much but scout out an area with a wide view of the sky, get Chipotle, and watch reality TV. Then I woke up Monday morning deranged. I'd slept badly until daybreak, when I passed out and slept until almost 10 (typical insomnia for me...some part of me is nocturnal) and when I woke up, I rolled over and buried myself in cloud forecasts, weather radar, and the Clear Sky Chart. It was cloudy -- it was even drizzling a little -- and there were four hours until first contact. I was freaked out. Fully overcast skies were not acceptable to me. If we were going to move, to drive somewhere else within the path of totality where conditions might be clearer, we needed to decide and start moving right away, because, as everyone had been saying for months, all the highways within totality were going to be one big traffic jam.
As I was scarfing down breakfast and going over all of this with my mom, she pointed out that there was now direct sun coming in the kitchen window.
The low-pressure area had blown out east (to blot out the maximum partial eclipse for the people we'd left back in PA, unfortunately) and the sky was filmed with a thin, patchy layer of upper-level clouds, through which the sun was easily visible through eclipse glasses.
We had the following discussion about six times, occasionally switching roles: "I'd really like to just stay here and set up my telescope, but what if the clouds thicken up again, like Accuweather said they would?" "But if we start driving, we run the same risk anywhere else in the state. Look at the map." "This forecast clearly says there's a lower chance of clouds in the western half of the state. We could go there for better odds. It's not far." "If everyone else is thinking the same, we might miss most of the partial eclipse looking for somewhere to stop and set up. What if we're caught in traffic during totality?" "That would be the worst-case scenario, and I do like the yard here. It's the perfect place to set up our gear and observe all the phases." "Oh no, look, the clouds are getting thicker again."
Eventually, we decided our odds were as good where we were as anywhere else we could reach -- plus we ran out the clock. The tension in my body had me literally hopping up and down. We watched and listened to some eclipse-related videos and podcasts as the clock ticked down to first contact, getting our heads set for what to expect and what to look for. I downloaded an eclipse timer app at the last minute. Just before 2, we went to our chosen spot and set up.
My Astroscan hadn't been used in a few months and the focus tube was stuck tight, and while I fucked around with that I missed first contact itself. The app counted it down and announced it, and my mom was looking up with eclipse glasses in time. A few minutes later, I'd unstuck the focus tube (brute force. The Astroscan uses a friction roller to advance the tube, and when it's stuck, you literally just have to yank on it) and we had a gorgeous little projection of the sun set up, showing sunspots and all. Occasionally, thin wisps of cloud floated over the sun, invisible through eclipse glasses but sharply detailed on the projection.
We chattered in manic anticipation as the moon's shadow ate up the sun. Slowly, the world dimmed; bird sounds quieted, and so did all the human sounds as people stopped doing and started watching. Color got a little weird. The bright red telescope against the bright green grass dulled out. The thinning band of sunlight caused shadows to sharpen in one direction while remaining diffuse perpendicular to that. I'd seen all of this before, in 2017; I saw about a 90% eclipse back then, but I'd never seen totality. As the sun narrowed into a toenail clipping, I spread out a white sheet to catch shadow snakes, which ended up being the one phenomenon we really never saw (possibly because the sky still just wasn't quite clear enough). My phone counted down to second contact aloud. "Three...two...one...GLASSES OFF, GLASSES OFF."
I can't tell you what totality was like. I can say what happened, but I can't describe the experience of those three minutes in a way that feels sufficient. That's why this post is so delayed. I kept waiting for words to come into my mind. Pictures won't help. Certainly not my hasty phone photos (I am no photographer), but even the professional pictures and videos I've seen don't really bring it across, as beautiful as they are. People glibly call it otherworldly. I heard someone on a podcast describe it as the closest you can get to space travel without leaving Earth, but I don't know. Presumably they've never left Earth, and neither have I. I think VSauce Michael got the closest I've heard when he described a sense of awe and dread and fear: something inconceivably more massive than you is happening, and you can't stop it, you can't pause it or slow it down. You have no power over an eclipse. It confounds chickens and streetlamps and humans with science degrees alike. We are fragile little earthbound creatures living short little lives, and the powerful objects moving in the heavens baffle and frighten us just like they always have. When totality arrived, my whole body was shaking, and it didn't stop until the moon's shadow had passed us. You work and plan and study and set up beforehand, but you don't choose what to do during totality. You can't. It happens to some part of you more fundamental than the part that operates telescopes; I didn't touch mine until totality ended. I'm lucky I managed to operate my phone camera for a few seconds. Totality happens to the part of your mind that experiences dreams and nightmares.
I hope I've gotten ten percent of the way to explaining properly. I know why people chase eclipses to the middle of the ocean.
Objectively, it was all as expected. The world dipped into 360° sunset, red light scattering in around the whole horizon from the surrounding areas outside totality as the sky above went twilight-dark. Venus was evident to the lower right of the eclipse, at a higher elevation than Venus can ever be seen under normal conditions. Dozens of people were standing around the lawns and parking lots nearby, and they started shouting and cheering. The corona... I'm frustrated, because none of the pictures show the corona right. It was bright pinky-red, so bright but so distinct -- the individual solar prominences were visible without magnification. The human eye just sees this differently than cameras do. One prominence on the bottom of the sun was so big and bright I was honestly confused about what I was seeing until I looked it up later. (Right now, the sun is close to an activity maximum -- basically it's in a party phase -- so the sunspots and prominences were extra dramatic.)
And then the glorious diamond ring reappeared and we slapped our glasses back on and it was over, and there was no going back inside the thing that had just happened.
We sat and watched the moon's shadow leave as we'd watched it arrive, although most people seemed resume normalcy as soon as the streetlamps turned off again. Someone started mowing a lawn right next to us. The sunspots re-emerged one at a time.
(And then we drove home that night because we're stupid. We had another night booked, but we didn't feel like waiting around, and the traffic didn't look that bad on Google Maps! Mistake. This is the only thing I'd do differently. It took us an extra two hours to get home.)
The next day I compared my sketchy phone photo of totality to the latest solar pictures from SOHO and went, oh, shit, those bright spots aren't random! I've flipped and rotated a picture from the LASCO coronagraph from the 8th to demonstrate the comparison. LASCO is an instrument that creates an artificial solar eclipse within itself by blocking the disk of the sun, so it shows the same coronal streamers that were visible to the naked eye during totality, but, um, a lot clearer. Streamers are bigger but not as bright as prominences; that big red prominence I mentioned isn't visible in either image as a distinct thing. (I'm guessing LASCO has it blocked out along with the surface of the sun.) It was within that extra-bright part of the corona along the bottom. So neither of these pictures shows what I saw, but they do show something interesting. This is not the sort of observational astronomy you can usually do with an unaided cell phone camera!
We got there Sunday night and didn't do much but scout out an area with a wide view of the sky, get Chipotle, and watch reality TV. Then I woke up Monday morning deranged. I'd slept badly until daybreak, when I passed out and slept until almost 10 (typical insomnia for me...some part of me is nocturnal) and when I woke up, I rolled over and buried myself in cloud forecasts, weather radar, and the Clear Sky Chart. It was cloudy -- it was even drizzling a little -- and there were four hours until first contact. I was freaked out. Fully overcast skies were not acceptable to me. If we were going to move, to drive somewhere else within the path of totality where conditions might be clearer, we needed to decide and start moving right away, because, as everyone had been saying for months, all the highways within totality were going to be one big traffic jam.
As I was scarfing down breakfast and going over all of this with my mom, she pointed out that there was now direct sun coming in the kitchen window.
The low-pressure area had blown out east (to blot out the maximum partial eclipse for the people we'd left back in PA, unfortunately) and the sky was filmed with a thin, patchy layer of upper-level clouds, through which the sun was easily visible through eclipse glasses.
We had the following discussion about six times, occasionally switching roles: "I'd really like to just stay here and set up my telescope, but what if the clouds thicken up again, like Accuweather said they would?" "But if we start driving, we run the same risk anywhere else in the state. Look at the map." "This forecast clearly says there's a lower chance of clouds in the western half of the state. We could go there for better odds. It's not far." "If everyone else is thinking the same, we might miss most of the partial eclipse looking for somewhere to stop and set up. What if we're caught in traffic during totality?" "That would be the worst-case scenario, and I do like the yard here. It's the perfect place to set up our gear and observe all the phases." "Oh no, look, the clouds are getting thicker again."
Eventually, we decided our odds were as good where we were as anywhere else we could reach -- plus we ran out the clock. The tension in my body had me literally hopping up and down. We watched and listened to some eclipse-related videos and podcasts as the clock ticked down to first contact, getting our heads set for what to expect and what to look for. I downloaded an eclipse timer app at the last minute. Just before 2, we went to our chosen spot and set up.
My Astroscan hadn't been used in a few months and the focus tube was stuck tight, and while I fucked around with that I missed first contact itself. The app counted it down and announced it, and my mom was looking up with eclipse glasses in time. A few minutes later, I'd unstuck the focus tube (brute force. The Astroscan uses a friction roller to advance the tube, and when it's stuck, you literally just have to yank on it) and we had a gorgeous little projection of the sun set up, showing sunspots and all. Occasionally, thin wisps of cloud floated over the sun, invisible through eclipse glasses but sharply detailed on the projection.
We chattered in manic anticipation as the moon's shadow ate up the sun. Slowly, the world dimmed; bird sounds quieted, and so did all the human sounds as people stopped doing and started watching. Color got a little weird. The bright red telescope against the bright green grass dulled out. The thinning band of sunlight caused shadows to sharpen in one direction while remaining diffuse perpendicular to that. I'd seen all of this before, in 2017; I saw about a 90% eclipse back then, but I'd never seen totality. As the sun narrowed into a toenail clipping, I spread out a white sheet to catch shadow snakes, which ended up being the one phenomenon we really never saw (possibly because the sky still just wasn't quite clear enough). My phone counted down to second contact aloud. "Three...two...one...GLASSES OFF, GLASSES OFF."
I can't tell you what totality was like. I can say what happened, but I can't describe the experience of those three minutes in a way that feels sufficient. That's why this post is so delayed. I kept waiting for words to come into my mind. Pictures won't help. Certainly not my hasty phone photos (I am no photographer), but even the professional pictures and videos I've seen don't really bring it across, as beautiful as they are. People glibly call it otherworldly. I heard someone on a podcast describe it as the closest you can get to space travel without leaving Earth, but I don't know. Presumably they've never left Earth, and neither have I. I think VSauce Michael got the closest I've heard when he described a sense of awe and dread and fear: something inconceivably more massive than you is happening, and you can't stop it, you can't pause it or slow it down. You have no power over an eclipse. It confounds chickens and streetlamps and humans with science degrees alike. We are fragile little earthbound creatures living short little lives, and the powerful objects moving in the heavens baffle and frighten us just like they always have. When totality arrived, my whole body was shaking, and it didn't stop until the moon's shadow had passed us. You work and plan and study and set up beforehand, but you don't choose what to do during totality. You can't. It happens to some part of you more fundamental than the part that operates telescopes; I didn't touch mine until totality ended. I'm lucky I managed to operate my phone camera for a few seconds. Totality happens to the part of your mind that experiences dreams and nightmares.
I hope I've gotten ten percent of the way to explaining properly. I know why people chase eclipses to the middle of the ocean.
Objectively, it was all as expected. The world dipped into 360° sunset, red light scattering in around the whole horizon from the surrounding areas outside totality as the sky above went twilight-dark. Venus was evident to the lower right of the eclipse, at a higher elevation than Venus can ever be seen under normal conditions. Dozens of people were standing around the lawns and parking lots nearby, and they started shouting and cheering. The corona... I'm frustrated, because none of the pictures show the corona right. It was bright pinky-red, so bright but so distinct -- the individual solar prominences were visible without magnification. The human eye just sees this differently than cameras do. One prominence on the bottom of the sun was so big and bright I was honestly confused about what I was seeing until I looked it up later. (Right now, the sun is close to an activity maximum -- basically it's in a party phase -- so the sunspots and prominences were extra dramatic.)
And then the glorious diamond ring reappeared and we slapped our glasses back on and it was over, and there was no going back inside the thing that had just happened.
We sat and watched the moon's shadow leave as we'd watched it arrive, although most people seemed resume normalcy as soon as the streetlamps turned off again. Someone started mowing a lawn right next to us. The sunspots re-emerged one at a time.
(And then we drove home that night because we're stupid. We had another night booked, but we didn't feel like waiting around, and the traffic didn't look that bad on Google Maps! Mistake. This is the only thing I'd do differently. It took us an extra two hours to get home.)
The next day I compared my sketchy phone photo of totality to the latest solar pictures from SOHO and went, oh, shit, those bright spots aren't random! I've flipped and rotated a picture from the LASCO coronagraph from the 8th to demonstrate the comparison. LASCO is an instrument that creates an artificial solar eclipse within itself by blocking the disk of the sun, so it shows the same coronal streamers that were visible to the naked eye during totality, but, um, a lot clearer. Streamers are bigger but not as bright as prominences; that big red prominence I mentioned isn't visible in either image as a distinct thing. (I'm guessing LASCO has it blocked out along with the surface of the sun.) It was within that extra-bright part of the corona along the bottom. So neither of these pictures shows what I saw, but they do show something interesting. This is not the sort of observational astronomy you can usually do with an unaided cell phone camera!
no subject
Date: 2024-04-18 01:57 pm (UTC)Thank you for sharing your experience.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-18 04:33 pm (UTC)