Under the dark of the moon

[aadler]

So, yes, as I indicated in a previous post, Susan and I went to one of the prime locations to view the total solar eclipse. We’d seen warnings that there might be traffic slowdowns (from all the other people doing the same thing), so we started off early by car. No problem on the way in, we went 112 miles in 104 minutes. Susan had made an advance arrangement for us to stop in a church parking lot — they were renting out the space as a fund-raiser for a youth summer camp — and we got our placard with several hours to spare.

Now in no hurry, we got a late breakfast in a local restaurant. As it turned out, one of the other patrons was a retired astronaut, in town with a scientific crew to film the eclipse, and he let Susan take a photo with him to send to Amber in China.

Back at the church, we sat under the awning for a few hours, talking with the church people managing the parking lot. As it got closer to the time the eclipse would begin, we moved to camp chairs next to our car. The guy right next to us was a medical student from out of state … and I had to tell him that, no, it was not safe to look directly at the eclipse without protective eyewear once the sun was fully occluded by the moon. (In fact, my understanding is that full occlusion is when you’re most vulnerable to eye damage. I’ve been hearing this stuff for years, how does a medical student not know it?)

The eclipse, once it began, took over an hour to fully manifest. We used our special glasses to track the progress. The funny part was that the visible light changed only very gradually, and when change actually showed it was …weird. It was as if the sunlight were both bright and dim at the same time, or like looking at sunlight through polarized sunglasses. One of the automatic lights on a nearby building came on even before any dimming began, so clearly the sensors could detect the change before human eyes could. Through the eclipse glasses I could see the sun narrowing to a thinner and thinner sliver, while it remained almost full (discernible) light around us. Susan had heard that the change in light would make red and green colors look odd as the eclipse progressed, so we both wore red; she claimed she could see the difference, I never did.

Once full occlusion was in place — but not before that moment — it got dark all at once. That was also when I discovered that the eclipse glasses, which had allowed us to safely view the eclipse as it was progressing, were too dark to use in seeing the full eclipse (the famous black disk with a bright corona). Susan felt a cooling in the temperature while it was full dark, but I was focused elsewhere and didn’t note it myself.

Traffic stacked up on the road to the Interstate, so Susan and I found a place to eat, hoping some of that would subside in the meantime. If it made any difference, I couldn’t tell; the drive we’d made in a little over an hour and a half in the morning took more than three times that long on the way back, and we kept running into slowdowns — and even complete stoppages — as far as within ten miles of our RV home. (We had discussed taking the RV and just staying overnight, but with all things taken together it was less hassle to keep our home parked and make the trip by car.)

So that was my experience with a total eclipse. Mildly interesting, no huge deal in total; mainly, I would have just felt dumb to not do it when the opportunity was there. For everybody who found it a great experience, good for you; not everybody is wired the way I am (be a very different world if they were).