[ad_1]
I went to Buffalo to watch my third total solar eclipse. The train from New York was lined with countless hats, T-shirts and glasses with slogans related to the phenomenon – there were amateur astronomers, families, New Age nostalgics. A friend’s house was right in the path of totality, and I was able to arrange the equipment to record some videos in the garden to my liking. For some time, I have been most interested in studying the environmental conditions in which eclipses occur. Let me explain. By now, you have seen thousands of videos and photos of the different phases of the eclipse. The moon bites the sun. The moon covers the sun. The bump. The crown. The moon slips away from the sun. It is an unparalleled spectacle, nothing on Earth can even remotely approach it, and no video or photography can convey the emotion of seeing the black sun burning in the sky. It is worth the trip for the once in a lifetime experience.
I’ll say right away that this one went badly. The sky was clear, then cloudy, then gloomy. We nervously followed the weather forecast on the app, the radar reproduced minute by minute the forecast of cloud cover, wind speed, clear weather, but there was no escape. Even though we saw several partial phases, in totality the stars were invisible, unruly, hidden.
What happened on the ground
Yet what happens on the scene exceeds all expectations. People see the shadow of the moon reach the clouds with astonishing speed. Night falls in a matter of seconds. (American homes have all sorts of luminous decorations in their gardens that are activated at dusk to the delight of their neighbors: their sensors are fooled by the fall of light, giving life to the Christmas markets, which are ablaze with lights.) As a result, darkness comes so quickly that no one notices. People notice the loss of light: it is as if the objects themselves have changed color or been covered with a dark, sickly dust. We long for the sun to return; we see the tail of the shadow break free from the clouds above us and continue to rush violently to the northeast, like a dark wind.
experience
This experience was cognitively transformative. We should step back and remember how we came to understand the mechanics of an eclipse, how the Babylonians had already managed to compile a long series of catalogs that allowed us to understand some regularities, at least of the eclipses of the moon. The story is long and exciting, but the point I want to emphasize is that the experience of a total eclipse, especially when neither the sun nor the moon can be seen, puts us in direct contact with our distant ancestors, all those who suddenly found themselves in a very fast, inexplicable, terrible night, and was also a source of curiosity. The eclipse created a cognitive commonality between us and them. The ancients learned something from the eclipse: for example, it seems insignificant that the moon is closer to the earth than the sun. The sun has a flaming crown. If we can calculate the ratio between the distance of the earth-moon and the distance of the moon-sun, as Aristarchus did (1/20 for Aristarchus, 1/400 in reality), we can conclude that the sun is much larger than the moon (eight thousand times is a low estimate). Gradually, quantitative data will bring order to the phenomena, and we will be able to predict the trajectory of eclipses (as a physicist friend told me, it was thanks to Laplace that American hoteliers were able to do brisk business this year).
The shadow of the moon
But the direct perception of an eclipse has a very powerful effect, placing us in the context of the universe. The moon’s shadow reaches out to us, licking the clouds above us. Because it is the moon’s shadow we see, it is as if our satellite has reached out a hand to touch us, reminding us that we are the smallest part of the powerful and calm architecture of space and time.
[ad_2]
Source link
