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I wasn't quite 2 years old that last time there was a total solar eclipse anywhere near this part of the world. Sometime around when I was 6 my parents told me about it, and we looked up when the next one would be. 2017! I'd be almost 40! I still remember the disappointment I felt. That was just impossibly far away. I would never see a total solar eclipse.
On Monday, I saw one. I saw that one, after waiting pretty much literally my entire life for it.
So, I'd seen lots of partial eclipses before. On one memorable occasion, I snuck onto the roof of the Physics/Astronomy Building at UW to view one. They're neat, and I'll take a look if someone has a viewing system set up, but, you know, eh. I feel okay being a bit jaded about them. That will never happen with total eclipses, I'm sure of that now.
It was one of the most singularly eerie things I've ever experienced. In a good way, to be sure, but still deeply eerie. The world just gets weirder and weirder, getting oddly cold, with the wind picking up, the light not looking quite right, shadows misshapen. If you didn't have eclipse glasses, though, you'd never be able to tell what was happening until the very end. Your brain just does too much post-processing to be able to directly tell the difference between 100% sun and 10% sun. Everything looks normal, it just feels... off. Ominous. And then it's the end of the world.
I really don't know how else to describe it. The sun going out is legitimately apocalyptic, no matter how sure you are it will return in 2 minutes. What I never understood before is that the sun doesn't just disappear. In its place emerges an alien god, blind and unknowable, staring unblinking from the sky. Welcome to Night Vale. It was awesome and terrible, in the oldest senses of those words. We had fallen into the Upside Down, and despite having read Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler AND Newton, I don't mind saying a part of me was deeply relieved when it was done.
It's dark, but it's not actually night. The horizon is still lit, but without any of the red tones expected from sunset. 360 degrees of deep-blue all around, and dark above. I managed to see Venus and Sirius (Venus was visible for several minutes before and after totality, actually), but not Mercury. Which is a bummer, because I've never seen Mercury.
And then it was done. I don't know if I'm going to become a chaser, but I'll definitely go out of my way for one again. One of the ones with 7+ minutes of totality would be pretty amazing. Maybe somewhere the sun will be low on the horizon, so the psychological effects will make the alien god look even bigger. In a desert, maybe. Some things should really only be seen in a desert, or on a mountain top, or maybe next to a tor up in the tundra.
On Monday, I saw one. I saw that one, after waiting pretty much literally my entire life for it.
So, I'd seen lots of partial eclipses before. On one memorable occasion, I snuck onto the roof of the Physics/Astronomy Building at UW to view one. They're neat, and I'll take a look if someone has a viewing system set up, but, you know, eh. I feel okay being a bit jaded about them. That will never happen with total eclipses, I'm sure of that now.
It was one of the most singularly eerie things I've ever experienced. In a good way, to be sure, but still deeply eerie. The world just gets weirder and weirder, getting oddly cold, with the wind picking up, the light not looking quite right, shadows misshapen. If you didn't have eclipse glasses, though, you'd never be able to tell what was happening until the very end. Your brain just does too much post-processing to be able to directly tell the difference between 100% sun and 10% sun. Everything looks normal, it just feels... off. Ominous. And then it's the end of the world.
I really don't know how else to describe it. The sun going out is legitimately apocalyptic, no matter how sure you are it will return in 2 minutes. What I never understood before is that the sun doesn't just disappear. In its place emerges an alien god, blind and unknowable, staring unblinking from the sky. Welcome to Night Vale. It was awesome and terrible, in the oldest senses of those words. We had fallen into the Upside Down, and despite having read Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler AND Newton, I don't mind saying a part of me was deeply relieved when it was done.
It's dark, but it's not actually night. The horizon is still lit, but without any of the red tones expected from sunset. 360 degrees of deep-blue all around, and dark above. I managed to see Venus and Sirius (Venus was visible for several minutes before and after totality, actually), but not Mercury. Which is a bummer, because I've never seen Mercury.
And then it was done. I don't know if I'm going to become a chaser, but I'll definitely go out of my way for one again. One of the ones with 7+ minutes of totality would be pretty amazing. Maybe somewhere the sun will be low on the horizon, so the psychological effects will make the alien god look even bigger. In a desert, maybe. Some things should really only be seen in a desert, or on a mountain top, or maybe next to a tor up in the tundra.