Total Eclipse: On the Far Side of Totality

by Shane L. Larson

How do you describe the indescribable?

I’ve been a skywatcher for more than half of the years of my life. I’ve literally spent thousands of hours with my telescope, watching the sky, making sketches to remind me of what I saw, keeping notes about appearances, and making lists of favorites to look at again. I’ve seen the rings of Saturn, and the Great Red Spot. I’ve observed supernovae, seen comets stretch across the sky, and watched the aurora borealis storm overhead. I’ve seen a transit of Venus, a once in a lifetime event.

But nothing prepared me for what I saw on Monday, standing on a hillside in Casper, Wyoming. For a brief two minutes, the Moon covered the Sun in the total solar eclipse of 21 August 2017.

Our morning started early, arriving at 5:30am. We weren’t tired now; that was later, after the eclipse was over and the adrenaline wore off! [Image by S. Larson]

My family and I, together with eight of our long time friends, set up on the grounds of Casper College, together with a vast number of our amateur astronomy colleagues who had been in Casper for the  2017 Astrocon Convention. The eclipse was due to start at 11:42am MDT, so we arrived on site early to set up: 5:30am!

By 6:00am the horizon began to glow with the scarlet tones of sunrise, and at 6:19 the Sun rose slowly over the distant horizon. We couldn’t see it, but we knew the Moon was right there too, steadfastly churning along its orbit, its shadow streaming through space, like a needle waiting to poke the Earth.

Sunrise and the appearance of the Sun. This was the moment when we knew in our cores that we were going to witness the total solar eclipse, without fail. [Images by S. Larson]

We had a row of tripods — some set up to image, some with binoculars, some with telescopes, all with solar filters. Every one of us had eclipse glasses that we constantly watched the Sun with, waiting for the first moment when the Moon would slowly begin to move between us and the Sun.

Eclipse glasses. This is pretty much how we looked all morning once the Sun came up. [Images by S. Larson]

We knew we were in for a wait, as the eclipse wasn’t due to start until 10:22am, and totality wouldn’t start until 11:42:42am!  So we paced back and forth restlessly. We took selfies with each other. We joked around. We checked the traffic, wondering if the slug of red between Denver and Cheyenne would make it to the path of totality on time. We played games. We make cookie art to track the eclipse.  You know — normal nerd herd stuff.

Just passing the time, tracking the eclipse by making art with cookies. [Images by S. Palen (L) and K. Larson (R)]

The folks down the row from us had an old Astroscan telescope, outfitted with a DIY homebuilt funnel projection screen (here are instructions from NASA) that was ideal for letting everyone see what was going on, and for taking pictures of what the Sun looked like during the partial phase of the eclipse. There was an excellent group of sunspots arcing across the middle of the Sun, and another small group down near the limb.

Our observing neighbors had an Astroscan fitted with an observing funnel (top left). The Sun had some great sunspot groups that day (top right). The screen made it easy to see the progression of the partial eclipse (lower 4 photos). [Images by S. Larson]

We also watched the progression with pinhole projections, looking at the shadows of anything with tiny holes in it. Every one showed a dazzling array of small crescent Suns, slowly being eaten by the Moon.

“Pinhole projection” is an easy way to enjoy the progress of the partial eclipse. We used a cheese grater and a Ritz cracker (Left), and also watched the dappled light in the shadows of the trees (Center and Right). [Images by S. Larson]

And then, we knew the moment was coming. We were all watching. The light got really flat and dim all around. It started getting darker, quickly. At the last moment before the Sun was completely covered, the left side burst out in a brilliant flare we call “the diamond ring.” Simultaneously, I remember the right side illuminated with a sharp edged circle, rimming the edge of the Moon. And then the Sun was gone. The total solar eclipse had begun.

We were on that hillside with maybe a thousand other people, and it erupted with cheering, screaming, whistling, and shouts of joy and astonishment. There are a million photos on the web of these precious few moments of darkness, suffused with the effervescent, gossamer glow of the Sun’s corona. They are fantastic pictures, but none of them capture everything I remember now in my mind’s eye.

The shapes are right, with two streaming horns pointing up and to the right and one down and to the left. Many of them show the bright red spot of a solar prominence peeking out from behind the limb of the Moon. A few that have been processed show the amazing interlaced structure in the corona.  My lifelong observing buddy (Mike Murray) and I agreed that the word we would have used to describe the view is translucent.

The best representation of the color I remember is the translucent blue of this plastic, in the middle of this cup (above the dark blue in the bottom). [Image by S. Larson]

But even more what I remember was it did not look white to me. It looked kind of pale blue. I’ve observed a lot of objects in the sky, and the diaphanous light of the corona reminded me all the world of the color in some planetary nebulae or bright, hot stars. I’ve been struggling to find something this same color, or a better way to describe the color. That night at dinner with my wife and daughter, I stumbled on a drinking cup whose translucent plastic comes close to being right.

But in the end, all of these attempts to describe the event fall far short of what I remember. There is nothing quite so profound as standing in the shadow of the eclipse, and it’s over before you even know it. The memory, while powerful, feels slippery — I want to cement it somehow, because it would be horrible to forget what I felt in those few moments. I immediately wrote down my notes (images of them are included at the bottom of this post), but they are pale by comparison to what is in my head. I recently met a psychologist named Kate Russo who studies and writes books about people who watch and chase solar eclipses. She names this feeling we all have about our solar eclipse experiences: ineffable.

I had resolved not to make a considerable effort to set up equipment and try to photograph the event. It was my first total solar eclipse, and I didn’t want to be distracted by the equipment and miss it. I did throw my phone up and snap a couple of pictures, but no more. It is small and grainy, but it looks like an eclipsed Sun. Knowing how fast it went, and how much more I wanted to just LOOK at it, I’m not sure I’ll ever go the route of taking pictures.

Totality. The best photo my iPhone could take? I dunno — the best photo I could take for the time I was willing to spend looking at the screen and not the eclipse! [Image by S. Larson]

In the day since the eclipse, I’ve seen many fantastic pictures of the eclipse from friends. Every single one, no matter how technically awesome it was shot, is spectacular. Why? Because they capture that ineffable moment that every person was trying to capture for their mental review later. Each one is a tiny memento, small and bright, captured on silicon and in digital pixels, that reminds the photographer what it was like to stand, just for a moment, in the shadow of the Moon.

During that same day, I’ve been looking at all those pictures, scrolling through what I had on my phone, talking with my wife and daughter, and talking with friends on social media. Always trying to cement the experience in my head. But quite by chance, I did something that I am thankful for. I set up my video camera (a little Sony Handycam) pointed at the Sun for about a half hour around totality. I didn’t know what it would capture on video, but what I wanted it for was audio.

I couldn’t have asked for any better record and memory of the event than that audio record. I’ve listened to it many times now, and each time I’m transported back to that moment on a hillside in Casper, surrounded by friends and a thousand other of my fellow humans, gazing up at the sky in stupified awe. Nothing shocks my memory with better clarity than this audio. A good friend of mine who is a psychologist in Colorado told me listening to this audio fired off mirror neurons in her brain. Mirror neurons are neural responses in your brain that respond from observing something going on as if you were there doing it yourself.

So I close this meager recounting of my experience with the audio of me and my friends, immersed in the moment. I hope you glean from it some of the joy and awe and ineffable wonder that we all felt standing there for those two minutes, and reminds you of similar moments you may have experienced and shared.

Mirabilis sole!

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I’m a fastidious note-taker. Here are images of my notes I took in the hours immediately after the event.

Notes Page 1. When big things happen, I often have my friends who are with me sign my observing log, so I remember they were there. [Image S. Larson]

Notes page 2. [Image by S. Larson]

Notes page 3. [Image by S. Larson]

Notes page 4. [Image by S. Larson]

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Here is the previous post I wrote leading up to this solar eclipse: Total Solar Eclipse: Anticipation (20 Aug 2017)

Here is a previous post I wrote about the astronomy behind a total solar eclipse: Stand in the Shadow of the Moon (25 Aug 2014)