Our friend Dave gave Brent a gadget for Christmas that’s kind of a clock. There are at least seven plastic gears in primary colors inside a clear plastic shell that sticks to a sun-facing window with a rubber suction cup. A 2-inch rectangular solar panel collects power from the sun, charges the mini copper-wound battery, which then moves the gears that spin two prisms causing tiny rainbows to pass across the room on sunny days.
In Oregon, we experienced 33% of the solar eclipse today. It was cloudy too. Not the best view of the big event. Our friends Mark and Doris drove 737 miles yesterday to witness the whole thing somewhere in Texas. When I called them an hour before they were expected to see what they would see, the sky was overcast and they were debating whether to drive further where the sky, they thought, might open up. They weren’t hopeful, but they were enjoying the drive anyway.
In yesterday’s New York Times, the solar eclipse made the front page, plus a full, two-page spread later in section one. But the accompanying photographs were not of the eclipse. Instead, they were images of people lying in the sun, playing in the sun, waiting for the sun, making shadows with the sun. The author, Elizabeth Dias, wrote about awe, and about humans “witnessing where science and spirituality intersect” to explain our fascination with the eclipse. I often wonder what it must have been like for early humans to see an eclipse, or changes in the moon’s shape, or the Northern Lights – events they couldn’t possibly explain except with their beliefs, their art, and their gods. In her article, Dias writes about Brother Guy Consolmagno, director of the Vatican Observatory (who knew there was such a thing, and isn’t that interesting to find out!):
If you had no idea the eclipse was happening, it would be terrifying. But when you can predict down to the second when it starts, when it will be at its maximum and when it will be finished, “it becomes a delight,” Consolmagno said, “that I can be so in tune with the universe. That, to me, crystallizes what it is to be a scientist, to be clever enough to predict, but then open to being surprised.”
Remember those models of the solar system our teachers used in elementary school? I thought they were pretty cool. But I was too young to grasp the scope of what that model was teaching. Today, as I was walking, waiting, and watching for the sun, the moon, the earth, and me to line-up, I thought about that plastic solar system and the gears in Brent’s office and the giant clock we’re living within. Taking time off to witness something that only happens rarely, was worth doing despite the clouds.
One scientist Dias describes in her NYT’s article, collected data that showed that sage brush showed signs of stress “during the 2017 eclipse as photosynthesis stopped and carbon uptake slowed.” The scientist who collected that data, Daniel Beverly, is collecting data today to see what happens to an entire ecosystem (in this case, a forest) during a total eclipse. Knowing this before I went out today, I found myself saying out loud to the critters and plants I took pictures of, “don’t worry, it’s coming back,” because eventually the sun always does.
With all the other news on the front page of The New York Times, it was a good reminder.
I rode my trike and reminded myself, as Poet Laureate Ada Lemon said, “you are here, you are here” (I am here on this trike, outside, solar eclipse above and I am here).Embrace the moment and the universe. All the rest is small stuff with or without totality
We are with family in Kansas City and got to see 90% totality on a perfectly clear day. The light got that tinny quality at about 30% and I wondered what the plants were “thinking.” I also found it amazing that even with 90% covered, our sun is STILL too bright to look at. Such an astounding universe we live in! (And that little solar prism clock is the COOLEST!)
Did you know about the “sonification” of the eclipse data? They translated the data live into music!