The solar eclipse

We remind you of an opportunity next month.

It’s coming up: a total solar eclipse will happen next month.  The path of totality will pass directly across North America, giving a lot of people the opportunity to see the spectacle.  While a partial eclipse can be unexpectedly interesting, even a deep partial cannot compare to totality.  Our astronomer is planning to see it.

Not, we should add, in the hope of making vital scientific observations.  While there are useful things to do during an eclipse, this is an age of space probes and ingenious instruments.  Solar eclipses are not the forefront events they once were.  And he doesn’t have the advanced camera and skills that would allow him to compete with the best photographers.  He plans to tinker with prisms or diffraction gratings, an approach that got him interesting results from a past eclipse, and is just a bit out of the ordinary.

And it has the merit that he might get something if the weather is not optimal.  For the weather is the most difficult part of the project; indeed, clouds are more probable than not over much of the shadow path.  Even a thin layer will make the details of the corona hard or impossible to see, and anything substantial will erase it entirely.  Our astronomer hopes to get some spectral lines even in somewhat uncooperative weather.

But it’s possible that spring clouds and showers will mask the Sun entirely.  In that case there will still be something strange going on.  It will get dark in the middle of the day.  And cold.  A detached bit of night will pass overhead and surround us, for a few minutes at least.

In spite of the risk of being clouded out (something our astronomer is of course familiar with), we do recommend trying to see the eclipse if at all possible.  It’s something that no picture, movie or description can quite capture, and if the weather cooperates it will be spectacular.  But remember: it will be night.  Dress warmly, and carry a flashlight.