on preemptive elation, eclipse edition
if you have been here a while, you’ll remember my dinosaur love post. there will be an eclipse love post following the actual event. i’m sorry in advance.
if it’s bad weather, i will absolutely cry.
on monday april 8th, we on the east coast of canada will be within the path of totality for the solar eclipse. i love a solar eclipse. i love the magic of something so powerful, so lifegiving as our sun being overshadowed by our moon, stealing all her glory, crowding her out.
within the path of totality, the moon will completely block the sun for up to four minutes. the dark of night during the day. our schools are letting out before noon and i plan to take my son further north to ensure maximal totality viewing. secretly i hope he will think it is as cool as i do, but i’m not holding out hope.
when the moon slips in front of the sun, darkness will fall across us. we will be able to see stars, maybe identify a planet or two. this for me is the the enchantment katharine may is trying to find in our world. imagine, the earth, moon, and sun all lining up at EXACTLY the right locations to produce something like this. i love it. i love the wow of this.
according to nasa, the oldest recording of an eclipse in human history may be petroglyphs found at the Loughcrew Megalithic Monument in County Meath in Ireland dated to 3340 B.C.E.
Scribes in China were recording eclipses in 1200 B.C.E. This also helped scientists figure out that the earth’s rotation has slowed by 47-thousandths of a second per day in the last 3,200 years. i can’t imagine a scribe in anyang, china contemplating that their recording of an eclipse would help future astronomers to calculate changes in the earth’s rotation.
i hope it isn’t cloudy. i hope i chose the right location. i hope a lot of things. i guess we’ll find out tomorrow.
nxx