Eclipse chaser David Baron discovers the real magic behind a total solar eclipse.
David Baron is a science journalist, broadcaster, and the author of American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World. An avid eclipse chaser, David has witnessed five total solar eclipses in such disparate locales as Indonesia, Australia, and the Faroe Islands. He has spent most of his career in public radio, as science correspondent for NPR, science reporter for Boston’s WBUR, and science editor for PRI’s The World. You can find him online at www.american-eclipse.com.
This story originally aired on April 28, 2017.
Story Transcript
Back in the 1990s, I was a science correspondent for NPR. And in the course of working on a story, I got some advice from an astronomer that truly changed my life. Now the story was about an eclipse, a partial solar eclipse that was gonna cross the United States. And the astronomer, Jay Pasachoff from Williams College, told me about the eclipse, how to observe it, and what made it interesting. But then he pointed out that you know, a partial solar eclipse is nothing compared to a total solar eclipse which is a completely different experience. And as he described it, a total solar eclipse is the most awe-inspiring sight in all of nature. And so the advice he gave me was this. He said, “Before you die, you owe it to yourself to experience a total solar eclipse.”
Well, that was pretty bold language and I took it seriously. And the thing about total eclipses is that if you wait for one to come to you, you’re going to be waiting a very long time. Any given point on Earth will experience total eclipse about once every four hundred years. But if you’re willing to travel, you don’t have to wait quite that long. So I did some research and I discovered that a few years later, in 1998, a total eclipse was gonna cross the Caribbean. And a total eclipse is only visible within a narrow band about a hundred miles wide called “the path of totality,” and that’s the zone that the moon’s shadow races along across the Earth. And the path of totality in February of 1998 was going to cross Aruba. So I talked to my husband, and we thought, well, Aruba’s not a bad place to be in February anyway, so we made plans to go enjoy the sun and see what happens during that brief time when the sun went away.
Well, February 26 found us on the beach behind the Hyatt Regency, waiting for the show to begin. And there were lots of folks out there, people with telescopes and binoculars who really knew what they were doing. We had our little cardboard eclipse glasses with really dark lenses that enable you to actually look at the sun safely because obviously without protection, you’ll ruin your eyesight. And we were waiting for the show to begin, and a total solar eclipse begins as a partial eclipse, as the moon very slowly makes its way in front of the sun. So we were watching with our eclipse glasses, and you could first see just this little notch in edge of the sun, and then the notch grew larger and larger, and after maybe a half hour now the sun looks sort of like a crescent moon, like a thick crescent moon. And it was all kind of interesting, but nothing particularly spectacular. The day was still bright, if no one had told us what was going on we wouldn’t have noticed anything.
Well, about ten minutes before the onset of the total eclipse, things started to get weird. So first just the quality of the daylight seemed different, colors seemed different. A cool breeze started to blow on this tropical island. And the shadows were different -- shadows had gotten really sharp. And it was if someone had turned up the contrast knob on television. And we looked under the palm trees where the sunlight was dappling the ground and instead of little spots of light, there were crescents because the spaces between the leaves were acting like pinhole cameras and were projecting onto the sand the image of the crescent sun. And then I looked over the water and I could see offshore the running lights on boats so clearly it was getting dark. I hadn’t realized how dark it was getting. And then very soon it really was getting dark, and it was almost like my eyesight was going. And then all of a sudden the lights went out. Well, at this, the beach just erupted with cheers. And we took off our eclipse glasses because at this moment, and only at this time, during the total phase of a total eclipse, it is safe to look at the sun with the naked eye. And we looked up, and I was just completely dumbstruck.
You see at this time I was in my mid-thirties, and I’d been living on Earth long enough to know what the sky looks like. I’d seen blues skies, and I’d seen gray skies, and I’d seen starry skies, and angry skies, and I’d seen pink skies at sunrise, but this, this was a sky that I had never seen. At first there were the colors. So overhead, it was a deep purple gray, like twilight, but on the horizon it was orange. It was like sunset three-hundred-sixty degrees. And overhead, in the twilight, bright stars and planets had come out. So, so there was Venus, and there was Mercury, and there was Jupiter, and they were all in a line, and along that line was this thing. This just glorious, bewildering thing. It was, it was this like wreath, woven of silvery thread, and it was just shimmering out there in space. And this is the sun’s outer atmosphere, the solar corona. And pictures just don’t do it justice, ’cause it’s not just a halo around the sun, or a ring, it is this textured, frilly object. It’s like it’s made of strands of silk. And it looks nothing like the sun, but I knew that this was our sun.
So I could see the sun, and I could see the planets, and I could see how the planets revolve around the sun, and it was as if I had stepped outside of the solar system, and I was looking back at creation. And, it was like it all made sense all of a sudden. And I was looking up, and then I look over at my husband, Paul, like “Can you believe what we’re looking at?” It was just the most moving, spiritual experience. And for the first time in my life, I felt truly, utterly connected to the universe, like there was nothing between me and everything else. And I think this is what they call Nirvana.
Well, I was in this state for one-hundred-seventy-four seconds, under three minutes. And then all of a sudden, it was over. The sun came back out. The blue sky returned. The corona and the planets were gone. We had to put our eclipse glasses on, and it was as if I had briefly stepped through the back of the wardrobe into this fantasy world and now I just been yanked back to reality. And I was, I was hooked. I wanted to experience it again.
Well, the next year, a total eclipse was gonna cross Europe. So I made plans to go to Munich. Convinced my aunt and uncle to meet me there, and again for three minutes I got to enjoy this bliss in the shadow of the moon. But unfortunately, total eclipses often travel to very inconvenient places – the middle of the ocean, Antarctica, Africa – and I had other priorities. Eclipse chasing is expensive, too. So I decided that I would set this aside and focus on more practical priorities. So that was my decision for about ten years, until I reached my mid-forties.
Now to explain, when I was in college, my mother died. She was forty-eight years old. She died of breast cancer. And I knew that that was young, that was young, but when I was in my early twenties, I didn’t understand really just how young that was. But now, as I was in my mid-forties, and approaching the oldest age my mother ever attained, it was difficult for me in many ways. I felt guilty that it looked like I was going to live longer than she did, and I grieved for her all over again. I just felt her loss, and I really understood how much of life she was denied. And it made me reflect on my own life – what is important to me? How do I want to spend my time? I hope that I get to live a nice long life, but that’s not guaranteed, and even if I do, how do I want to spend those days that I have? And I reflected back on my life, and I kept coming back to those three minutes in Aruba – that that was one of the most meaningful experiences I’d ever had. And I decided that as long as I’m still on Earth, I’m gonna go chase eclipses. And whatever it takes, I’m gonna go to where the moon’s shadow is. Even if no one comes with me, I’m going.
So I did. In 2012, I headed off to Australia. In 2015 I was in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic. And it was still exciting, but it didn’t quite feel the same and then it really struck me hardest last March when I was in Indonesia. So once again I was on a beach, watching as the sun went away and the corona came out. And at the end of it, when the total eclipse was over, instead of having that sense I had of deep connection, I just felt utterly and deeply alone because here I was in Indonesia and everyone I loved was on the other side of the planet. And I came to realize that a big part of what made that experience in Aruba so special – it wasn’t just what I was witnessing overhead, it was who I was with here on Earth… which brings me to 2017.
And this, this is the year I’ve been waiting for since that time in Aruba because this August, for the first time in thirty-eight years, a total solar eclipse will cross the entire continental United States. The path of totality goes from Oregon to South Carolina and it crosses Wyoming, which is just north of where I live in Colorado. And so I’ve got my plans all worked out. On August 21st, I will be in the Tetons at ten thousand feet, on a mountaintop, looking west towards Idaho to try to glimpse the moon’s shadow as it races in. And I will be up there with my husband, and my father, and my stepmother, and my brothers, and their families, and my aunt and uncle and cousins. And we’re gonna look as this great shaft of darkness comes down from outer space, and races towards us at sixteen-hundred miles an hour, and a cool wind will kick up, and the stars and planets will appear, and then the lights will go out, and together, we’ll take off our eclipse glasses and we’ll all look up. Thank you.