Partial really is “kinda neat.” The light level noticeably reduces a bit, like a very big cloud, and all the little dapples on the ground turn crescent shaped. More eerie than mind-blowing though. We got a minute of totality in 2024, which was very, very cool.
It is very cool. I’ll share what I wrote right after seeing a total eclipse a couple years ago:
Eclipse
As I watch through tinted glasses, the waxing crescent of the sun, unmarked by any craters, just a flat covered disk, fades evermore. The encroaching darkness comes faster and faster around the edges of my vision as the last traces of light in the sky turn to a speck, and then there is darkness.
I pull my shades off and hanging in the sky is a black hole surrounded by godly rays of light. It is a late summer evening around me at 3:05pm, just bright enough to see but not enough for details. To my left, the sunlight is setting as my eyes dart to the dim light on all sides, to the black hole sun, back around.
The edges of the black hole are the sharpest lines I have seen in nature, and all is quiet except the sounds of amazement and the odd firework. There is an orange dot at the bottom of the moon, perhaps a solar flare?
As I continue to look up, around, the sunlight rises to my right as the hole moves ever closer to the light’s edge. As the sun begins to peek out again I put my glasses back on to see a waning crescent of light slowly grow, dusk fades quickly into day. The shortest four minutes of my life have passed as the birds begin their morning calls.
Partial really is “kinda neat.” The light level noticeably reduces a bit, like a very big cloud, and all the little dapples on the ground turn crescent shaped. More eerie than mind-blowing though. We got a minute of totality in 2024, which was very, very cool.
It is very cool. I’ll share what I wrote right after seeing a total eclipse a couple years ago:
Eclipse As I watch through tinted glasses, the waxing crescent of the sun, unmarked by any craters, just a flat covered disk, fades evermore. The encroaching darkness comes faster and faster around the edges of my vision as the last traces of light in the sky turn to a speck, and then there is darkness.
I pull my shades off and hanging in the sky is a black hole surrounded by godly rays of light. It is a late summer evening around me at 3:05pm, just bright enough to see but not enough for details. To my left, the sunlight is setting as my eyes dart to the dim light on all sides, to the black hole sun, back around.
The edges of the black hole are the sharpest lines I have seen in nature, and all is quiet except the sounds of amazement and the odd firework. There is an orange dot at the bottom of the moon, perhaps a solar flare?
As I continue to look up, around, the sunlight rises to my right as the hole moves ever closer to the light’s edge. As the sun begins to peek out again I put my glasses back on to see a waning crescent of light slowly grow, dusk fades quickly into day. The shortest four minutes of my life have passed as the birds begin their morning calls.