With the spectacular April 8 total solar eclipse just three months away, the media have swung their attention its way. The Washington Post, for example, had a nice long piece about it last week, on January 3. Still, important stuff manages to get neglected. So here’s what you really should know, no fooling around.
First off, don’t think of this as being about astronomy as much as quality of life, meaning the chance for life’s most awesome experience. Because, as odd as it may sound, something wondrous and quite outside the structure of logic unfolds if one observes a total solar eclipse. I’ve been leading eclipse tours since March 7, 1970, still during my college years, a long time, and have watched thousands react to them. Half weep from the emotional impact! Most of the rest are rendered speechless. Only perhaps 1% appear blasé.
James Fenimore Cooper, who observed the totality of June 16, 1806 from the Finger Lakes region, wrote an essay many decades later where he said, “I have passed a varied and eventful life, that it has been my fortune to see earth, heavens, ocean and man in most of their aspects, but never have I beheld any spectacle which so plainly manifested the majesty of the Creator, or so forcibly taught the lesson of humility to man as a total eclipse of the Sun.”
But why should this be? Newbies imagine the thrill is the unique oddity of witnessing “darkness at noon.” But the celebrated impact scarcely revolves around darkness. In truth, solar totality is not particularly murky. Your surroundings remain brighter than the night of a Full Moon. Yes, stars do appear, but only a handful — far fewer, again, than are seen during the Full Moon. So darkness isn’t the big draw. Anyway, if you merely wanted darkness, you could save a lot of travel time and simply go into a closet. Or neglect paying your electric bill.
Instead, something ineffable happens when the Sun strikes the Moon at the unlikely angle of causing its shadow to fall on you. During the event, the Sun, Moon, and you form a perfectly straight line. Some inexplicable “energy” or “presence” is unleashed that you’ve never before felt or even imagined. It is ineffable; there is no language for it. Nor does it compare with any other earthly experience. People who have seen it rate the spectacle as superior to the Northern Lights, a great comet, or even the richest meteor shower.
Just visually, one sees the intricately bowed fine-line pattern of the Sun’s normally-invisible magnetic field, the solar system’s largest structure, now suddenly visible and bearing the name “corona” as it surrounds the blacked-out Sun. And the diamond ring, whose super-tiny dazzling pinpoint set against the inner corona doesn’t resemble its bloated big-blob photographic appearance caused by unavoidable over-exposure. And the deep pink prominences, those ruddy geysers of nuclear flame shooting out from the curved edges of the black moon-covered solar disk. And the actual visible motion of the pitch-black New Moon, seen creeping along in its orbit. And animals going crazy. And, in the minute or two before and again after totality, the normally-mundane earthly scene surrounding you – cars, trees, whatever — assuming a bizarre appearance with shadows strangely sharp, colors super-saturated, and “ordinary” life no longer ordinary thanks to illumination coming solely from the very edge or limb of the Sun. It’s as if Earth is being illuminated by some different kind of star.
And that’s just a quick summary of some of the visual magic. It’s accompanied by a simultaneous “feeling” or “vibe” never experienced at any other occasion. It drops people to their knees. While those who’ve never seen one assume they’d merely missed a few minutes of darkness.
It’s not easy to experience. Nature doesn’t readily hand out solar totalities. (Lunar eclipses are not in the same ball park). A solar totality appears over any given location just once every 360 years. And if it’s cloudy, you’ll wait another 360 years. So people pilgrimage, since most years there’s usually one somewhere on Earth. Our tour members sign up years in advance to have us take them to the Australian outback (2012) or the Egyptian Sahara (2006) or on board our ship to a lonely Romanian port on the Black Sea (1999) or the tip of the Baja Peninsula (1991.)
But this time, 2024, it’s no more than a several-hour drive in your own car, to a place as close as Watertown, Plattsburgh, or Burlington. Go online and find the path of totality. You want to be somewhere in the middle two-thirds of it, not along the edge where the eclipse is short. Then a day or two ahead of the event, check weather forecasts and head to where in the path the sky looks to be clearest.
Hotels being filled? Probably. But remember, you only need to be looking up at the sky around 3 p.m. local time. You can pull into a rest stop, a shoulder, a mall, a local park, a college track field, a farm or meadow, or any beach on Lake Champlain. And yes, it’s perfectly safe to look at during those three minutes of totality. I even use binoculars for a minute or so during the middle of it, to best show those pink prominences. But during the hour-long partial eclipse that precedes totality and then follows it, you must have eye protection. Eclipse glasses are cheap and widely available online. Or go to your local welding supply shop and order a bunch of filters, shade 12, 13, or 14. Some internet sources say only shade 14 is dark enough, but that’s wrong. However, do not use any shade below a 12.
Miss this, and the next US total solar eclipse won’t unfold until the 2040’s, unless you count the one nine years from now in far northern Alaska.
You didn’t ask, but I’ll give you my two cents. Take the day off.
Join the family! 
