On August 21, along with millions of people across the country, I saw my first total solar eclipse!
I joined a group of family and friends who had the foresight to reserve campsites in a state park in southeastern Oregon, just outside the totality zone. They had scouted out a suitable viewing site within the totality zone for the day of the eclipse. People from the Malheur County sheriff's office stopped by and said we had picked an excellent site, and by the way, did we have our eclipse glasses? (They had plenty to give away, but we were prepared.)
The first photo (below) was taken while we were in the penumbra of the moon. i.e. during the partial eclipse stage, leading up to totality. (See this page for more definitions of eclipse words.)
I got too wrapped up the experience to take any more pictures after that, watching the light change, the sky darken gradually and take on shades of sunset, particularly toward the west, the edges of our shadows sharpen as the moon encroached more and more across the sun. A member of our party had a centigrade thermometer and reported the temperature dropping as more and more sunlight was cut off by the moon; the total temperature drop was 7 °C, or 12 °F.
After over an hour of partial eclipse, the pace of events quickened as the edge of the umbra (the dark shadow of totality) swept in from the west, turning the land beneath it black. This was followed almost instantly by Baily's beads sparkling briefly around the periphery of the sun as the moon settled into place across its face. A beautiful diamond ring flashed its big sparkling jewel for a moment and then the moon was locked in, completely blocking the sun, letting the corona shine.
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| Diamond ring fades as the solar corona comes out and totality begins (Stephen McKamey photo) |
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| Corona (white) and parts of chromosphere (red) visible during totality (Stephen McKamey photo) |
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| The beautiful white corona during the middle of totality (Stephen McKamey photo) |
The three photos of the solar eclipse (above) were taken by a friend of the family who witnessed the eclipse from near Madras, in central Oregon, with a group of people who included some relatives of mine.
We had two minutes of totality from our site. The corona of the sun, as seen during a total eclipse, is one of those special sights that no description can come close to rendering. Despite being over a million degrees hot and consisting of a plasma of charged particles moving at high velocities, from my terrestrial vantage point the corona appeared to be silently, gently, gradually streaming its pearly tendrils of light around the black hole in the sky that had swallowed the sun.
During the total eclipse, as far as planets and stars that became visible in the darkened sky, I only spotted Venus. I later realized more stars were not visible because the moon was barely larger than the sun this time around. The sky did not get as dark and let as many stars appear as when the moon is close enough to earth during eclipse to block the sun off even more and put the viewer deeper into its dark shadow. You can tell how much bigger the moon is than the sun for a given eclipse by comparing the length of time of totality at its maximum.
This eclipse had about two and a half minutes of darkness at most, whereas some eclipses can last for several minutes longer, letting more stars become visible to people in the middle of the shadow. (The 2024 total solar eclipse will last over 4 minutes at maximum - look out Mazatlán and Dallas, lots of people will be turning out for that one!) In addition, we were not on the center line of totality for this eclipse, which would have put us in the umbra for two and a half minutes rather than the two minutes we experienced, so our sky did not turn quite as dark as it was for those in the center of totality.
As totality ended, another quickly flashing and fading diamond ring appeared, another set of Baily's beads shone through the valleys along the edge of the moon...and it was over! The mundane was returning all too quickly. Although the moon still covered most of the sun and gave the sunlight that strange penumbral quality of being weaker, yellower, and more rarefied than normal, the bright light was a sobering contrast with the dark shadow of totality. To look at the sun now, you needed to put your solar eclipse glasses back on.
I did what I could to protract the experience by lingering long enough to see, through my eclipse glasses, the "fourth contact," the last bit of the moon leaving the face of the sun, over an hour after totality had ended.
After seeing a total solar eclipse, my awareness of how the moon and sun affect us has been changed. Words like amazing and awesome get used a lot, but in this case, they retain the full depth and impact of their original meanings.
What do you think?
- Did you see the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017? What was it like for you?
- Did you see it from a vantage point where it was a total eclipse or a partial eclipse?
- Would you go out of your way and travel to a place in the path of totality for the next major eclipse that will the United States (and this time Mexico as well) on April 8, 2024?
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