The Eclipse Was Glorious!

Bulletin about the eclipse

sent to all local residents

The total solar eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017

My husband and I live about 20 miles from the point of greatest eclipse, near Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Our county and town governments planned for months to accomodate a huge crowd of Great American Eclipse viewers. No one knew how many people to expect; estimates ranged from 50,000 to 200,000. (Actually, between 100,000  and 150,000 visitors came to Christian County. They're still not sure how many!)

Dennis and I spent several quiet days at home before the eclipse, avoiding the crowds and traffic. It was pleasantly like being snowed in, except that the weather was hot and there was no snow. We followed the celebration through news reports on radio, television, and the internet. I worked on the rag rug I'm making, and my husband puttered around the yard and read his books.

I had bought our eclipse glasses months in advance. I saw a good idea online for children viewing the eclipse: mount the eclipse glasses in paper plates, creating a mask. It looked like an easy way for us to hold our eclipse glasses in front of our eyeglasses, so the day before the eclipse, I made masks for us.

Ready to view the eclipse

Finally Monday, August 21, 2017, arrived. The Great American Eclipse began at 11:56 AM in Christian County. A minute or two after it started, my husband grabbed his mask and went outside to check what was happening. He reported that he could see the edge of the moon, covering a small part of the sun, so I went outside with my mask. And it was quite amazing to see that a bit of the sun was indeed blacked-out. My daughter texted me, "It's starting! You can see it in one corner!", and I answered, "We're outside watching it!"

I had read a suggestion to observe the shadow that a collander cast on the ground as the eclipse progressed. So, I experimented with that, between my times of viewing the progress of the eclipse through my mask and going inside to escape the heat.  I shared a couple of colander photos real-time on Facebook, and it was fun to read some responses from other eclipse viewers. As you can see in the photo below, the holes in the shadow of the colander mirrored the progress of the eclipse. We saw the same effect in the sunlight shining through tree leaves and other small openings.

Shadow of a collander

Eclipse light and shadows on the ground

As the moon passed in front of the sun, hiding more and more of the sun's face, darkness crept over us. The temperature dropped ten degrees. The air was very still, and the remaining light became strangely gray. The birds stopped singing, and even our Mennonite neighbor's chickens became much more quiet. Witnessing the changes on earth in response to the event in the heavens was an oddly beautiful experience.

I had wondered how I would know for sure when I could safely remove my eclipse glasses and look directly at the sun. But the moment of total eclipse was very obvious. As I watched the last tiny glowing sliver of the sun through my eclipse glasses, the light suddenly disappeared completely, and I saw nothing but the darkness of mylar lenses in front of my eyes. 

Dennis was talking on the phone to his brother-in-law, giving an eyewitness account of the eclipse. I put down my mask and looked around. At all points of the horizon in all directions, I saw an orange glow that looked like sunset. It was as dark as early twilight. The sun was black in the center, with an orange glow around its outer edge. The coolness of the air was refreshing, but a sobering reminder of our planet's dependence on the sun for warmth. I hadn't expected to think deep thoughts, but I found myself pondering how tiny I was in comparison to the heavenly bodies passing each other before my eyes, and how our sun and moon are mere specks of dust in a vast universe.

The two minutes and forty seconds of the eclipse passed very quickly. As the sun began to emerge from behind the moon, the brilliance of the first blast of sunlight was astounding. Time for the eclipse mask again!

Later, I answered a questionaire online that asked for a one-word description of the eclipse. "Humbling," I wrote. Another good word would have been "unforgettable."

Watching the Great American Eclipse from our backyard