Everything under the sun is in tune but the sun is eclipsed by the Moon. And was in 2017.
The eclipse sweeping over North America today is being described as “rare”, mostly, I think, by people who’ve forgotten that there was one just seven years ago. And I can think of two others that happened where I lived, although they were pretty long ago. One was when I was in second grade, though Tennessee wasn’t in the path of totality, and it was cloudy that morning so those of us who brought our shoebox viewers didn’t get to use them. The other was late in the spring when I was in seventh grade, and late in the afternoon, too, on a very clear day. Again we weren’t in the path of totality but it was a partial eclipse. My friends and I walked home through backyards and vacant lots that had become so familiar to us but suddenly seemed strange in the bluish light of the eclipse. We gathered around a puddle and, in just the right position, could see the disk of the sun with a great round piece cut out of one side. And then it passed.
It really depends on how you define “rare”, of course. In just the next six years there will be fifteen more solar eclipses, and just as many lunar eclipses, although whether they’ll be visible all depends on where you are in the world.
I do think eclipses are amazing things even if, in astronomical terms, they’re not that unusual, at least for us on Earth, which is unusual in being the only rocky planet in the inner solar system to have a large moon. For the one in 2017 my wife and I drove about an hour east to get a few extra minutes of totality, and for this one we’ll be driving about an hour west, though not far enough for full totality, and it looks like it’ll be cloudy anyway.
The important thing for me about an eclipse is that it’s a reminder that we’re in a universe that’s constantly in motion: the planet we’re on spins, the moon orbits around it, it orbits the sun along with a cluster of other planets, and we’re on a merry-go-round ride in an outer arm of a galaxy that’s also moving through space. An eclipse is one of those events that causes me to stop and consider our place in the vast universe—something I only do rarely.
For me, your blog eclipses all other blogs, Chris.
Thank you for sharing everything under the sun with me, Ann.