August 21, 2017: a total eclipse of the sun

Harv came running up to me as I stood in line for the biffy, and handed me a pair of eclipse glasses.  It had started.  I knew it had started -- I’d heard the screams of excitement a few moments before.  The moon had started to obscure the sun.

I’d already been waiting 20 minutes for the privy, and there were 4 or 5 people still in front of me in line.  We’d all been waiting for days -- up to 3 days -- for the eclipse to start, camping in a field just outside of Madras, Oregon under a relentless sun.  But it was beginning now.  We were all here to see totality.   

Harv did not bring me my first glimpse of the eclipse.  A woman had been by about 5 minutes earlier, brandishing a few pair of extra eclipse viewers that she wanted to share.  The woman behind me had snagged a pair, and at the sound of the screams we’d each taken a look upwards.  I could see the slight scallop in the sun’s top right edge.  The middle-aged Asian man in front of me was skeptical.  The sun still looked like a disk to him.  

When my turn for privy came I held the viewer Harv had brought me in my lips, protecting them from the clean-enough, but not too clean surfaces in the privy, then ran all 60 m or so back to our campsite.  Harv and Jennifer were minding the telescopes, and the solar projector.  It was time to watch the event for which we’d travelled 8 hours, commandeered our friend’s daughter, and camped for 2 days in 31+C heat.

By the time I returned to camp there was a noticeable bite out of the edge of the  sun.  It was about 20 after 9.  We had about an hour to totality.  

We’d had a steady stream of visitors at our telescopes and projector all weekend.  But now that the eclipse had begun, it seemed that most people were sticking closer to their home turf, using whatever technology they’d brought with them to safely watch its progress.   I was able to put my eye to the telescope eyepiece, and watch to see if I could actually see the moon move.  

The sunspots that we’d spotted earlier were a good marker.  The largest group spread over the middle third or so of the sun’s disk, so as the eclipse progressed they would give us a better indication of how far it had progressed, and how far it had yet to go.   It was still some time until the first sunspot would vanish, but I called Elise over to note their position for future reference.

Elise was reading a book.  When you’re 13, you’re interested in cool natural phenomena, like eclipses.  But it’s a little much to ask to expect you to remain engrossed through a series of imperceptible changes over the course of an hour.

After Elise looked, I gave a couple of neighbour children their turn at the eyepiece.  Then it was  Harv’s turn have a look at the sunspot’s position before it was my turn to start watching again.  As I stared, I noticed something super cool.  It was hard to be 100% sure because of atmospheric shimmer, but through the telescope the moon’s edge did not appear to be an entirely smooth arc.  Was I seeing mountains and valleys on the moon’s surface?  The existence of Bailey’s beads suggested that it might be possible. I got excited and called Harv over.  He got excited.  We thought we were seeing something real.  We started telling everyone who came near that they could see mountains on the moon’s surface through the scope.

Of course, when you’re showing the public a view through a telescope, it’s hard to know what they’re really seeing.  Sometimes you have to move your eye around the field of view before you can spot the object of interest.  Often you have to focus, and people rarely do, even if you prompt them.   Jennifer estimates that a least a third of people that she helps during public viewings see exactly nothing, but are too self-conscious to say anything, or too impatient to let you adjust.

That being said, it was a kid from a nearby campsite who saw the first sunspot starting to be devoured.  I called Elise over to get a view.  Harv caught the edge of the first one, and was able to watch the series of small spots in the middle get devoured.

I said earlier that most were staying close to their campsites as the eclipse progressed.  But that meant only that we had fewer people stopping by, not that the stream had stopped.  In particular, over the course of the weekend Harv had invited various neighbours to stop by during the event, and a number of them took him up on the invitation.  This meant that Harv spent a considerable time adjusting the projector, pointing out the sunspots, and helping Jennifer with the H-alpha scope rather than spending it gazing up at the sun.

However, he did reserve the right to hog the scope and the projector for critical events, like the second and last sunspot group vanishing.  Totality was getting very close.  The second group had just appeared yesterday, and was positioned very close to the limb of the sun.

I couldn’t be entirely sure of what I was seeing as I glanced around the campsite, I asked Eric “is it getting darker?”  

“Oh yeah” he said.  It wasn’t my imagination.  The sunlight was starting to dim, and it felt noticeably cooler.  It’s hard to estimate the proportion missing from an occluded disk, but the sun was perhap 90% obscured.

Harv had a brilliant idea, which also involved hogging our own equipment.  There were two thrilling events about to occur: the moon’s shadow racing towards us, and of course, the onset of totality.   The projector would allow us to experience both. We could stand with our backs to the sun and watch the sliver of remaining sunshine shrink and vanish in the projector image, while waiting for the shadow to appear the volcanic cone of Mount Jefferson to the West.  

Conditions were not perfect:  the sun had blazed out of a cloudless sky all day Saturday.   Sunday had brought smoke from wildfires to the Western horizon, and a high thin layer of stratocumulous clouds.  Both had cleared near sunset, but the cell networks were so saturated by everyone trying to check the forecast for eclipse day that we hadn’t been able to download more than an early Sunday morning forecast that claimed the clouds would clear about 10am on Monday, and the frame of the weather forecast site for the rest of the day.  

When it dawned cloudy Monday I suspected a ‘fix’ by authorities.  The last thing they wanted Monday morning was a grid-locked mob trying to chase clear skies.  The high cloud persisted all morning, and there was smoke and clouds on the horizon, so that at the best of times we could see only part of the volcano to the West.   But there was no mistake when totality approached.  Mount Jefferson vanished into the dark.

You know how people start yelling mock-excitedly when they see fireworks?  “Oooh, ahhh”?  It wasn’t like that.  There were 20,000 people in our field in Madras, and some huge percentage them starting shouting in excitement and awe.

Elise later said that the mountain was the most impressive part of the entire eclipse.

I’ve heard about the approach of the moon’s shadow during the onset of totality.  For us it wasn’t a sharp edge.  I think the clouded skies may have played a part there.  But seconds later the sun completely vanished.  And Mount Jefferson reappeared, shadowed but backlit by the sun shining behind it, outside of the zone of totality.

But we weren’t looking at Mount Jefferson anymore.  There was a burning black hole in the sky above us.  Totality had begun.

The sun seemed huge in the sky.   The corona blazed irregularly and jaggedly around its edges.  I could hear a roaring that wasn’t there.

I was experiencing a total eclipse of the sun.

We all remember different parts of totality.  Elise tells me that we all started spontaneously hugging each other.   Jennifer noticed the tie-dyed family just down from us with their faces streaming tears.  Harv talks in detail of the re-appearance of the sun as the eclipse ended.

I remember how overwhelming it felt.  I tried to experience everything I’d been told would happen.   I tried to see stars, but the sky was not completely dark, not dark like it is at night.  It was darkened, as it would be late into dusk.  The only star that was clearly visible was Venus, blazing through the muck near the sun’s disk.  Harv had talked about a lemon-yellow horizon in every direction during the 1977 totality.  For us the entire horizon looked like a normal mid- sunset or dawn for 360 degrees, although the sunset effect was stronger in some directions than others.  

I put my eclipse glasses back on, saw nothing.  Took them off.

The air was cool, almost too cool comfort in the tanktop and shorts that I was wearing in anticipation of the forecast 34C high for the day.

Harv started panicking.  He couldn’t find his binoculars.  He’d wanted to use unprotected optics during the very brief interval where it was safe to point them directly at the sun.  

Fortunately at about 40% obscured I’d dug mine out of the tent and had stashed them under the flap of the vestibule.  I wasted a few precious seconds grabbing them and getting them to Harv.  He was able to spot Mars.  He handed the binoculars to me so I could also look at the sun’s disk and miraculously not instantly blind myself.   I handed them back to Harvey, then looked up at Mount Jefferson behind us. The volcanic peak blazed in the sun.  Totality would end in seconds.  

“Look at the mountain Harv!  It’s almost over.” He put down the binoculars.  I turned my eyes to the sun just in time to see two red blazes appear beside the larger central blaze of the sun’s reappearance.  

I’d just seen the diamond ring effect.  Totality was over.

The first truck crept out of the campsite minutes later.  But I was still euphoric.  I couldn’t imagine treating totality like a sporting event that you abandon before the end to avoid traffic.   The air was still chilly, the sunlight dim, and there was still an hour of partial eclipse to experience.

The aftermath wasn’t as dramatic as the leadup, but I was giddy.  People kept coming by to use our gear, and take pictures of our projector or through one of our scopes.  I kept my eye riveted to the eyepiece of Harv’s scope long enough to start wondering just how good his white light filter really was, and whether or not I should really be spending that much time at the eyepiece watching the ragged edge of the moon retreat.  At one point, I noticed a large mountain on the moon, near the centre of the moon’s disk.  I watched as it grew, and a black blob separated from its surface….it took me a disjointed moment to realize that I’d just watched the first and largest of the sunspots regurgitated by the retreating moon.

I kept pulling Elise from her book to show her the progress of the end.  She said later that she was counting on us to show her the interesting parts.  But everything was winding down.   There was a steady stream of cars inching out of our field, exposing the grass scarred by herbicide to delineate our campsites.  And as the sunlight brightened, the fact that we hadn’t taken the time to put the canvas on the sunshade started to feel like an issue.

Finally, about an hour after the end of totality, a cheer raised up from another corner of the field.  Through unaided eclipse glasses you could no longer tell that the sun was occluded.  A few  seconds later, and we could see through the scope that the eclipse was finally over.

As we were planning our trip, I’d thought that waiting around for a day after the eclipse ended would be the dullest part of the experience.  But even though we got busy putting up the shade shelter, making lunch, and watching Eric and Jennifer pack up to leave, we were all glowing.  It’s impossible to capture the experience of a total eclipse.  You can tell people what happened.  You can describe all of the sights, and sounds, and how the temperature changed.  But you can’t convey how it felt.  It was exhilarating. It felt momentous.  It was easy to understand how absolutely and utterly terrifying it would have been without the benefit of a scientific explanation.  

I’m too much of an introvert to have met as many of the neighbours as Harvey and Jennifer.  But we were all in that field for the same reason, and we’d all had the same experience.  We talked as we wouldn’t have talked to strangers under other skies.  We probably did hug under totality, as Elise remembers.  And we certainly said good-bye before everyone left.

So, any conclusions?  Only that I’m thinking of being in South America in 2019.  And in the East in 2024.  Chasing totality no longer seems like fringe activity.

P.s. One of our neighbour campers took a video of Mount Jefferson during the eclipse. You can see the effect that I described above starting at about 3 minutes into the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUhFz7n7vLo&feature=youtu.be