by Tom Shafer
February 24, 2024
So, unless you have been living under a rock for the past couple of months, you are now well aware that a total solar eclipse will be crossing a large swath of North America on April 8, 2024. Excitement is growing in our area, with local businesses and schools announcing plans and/or closings on that day. Personally, I have been sharing my own experience from the 2017 solar eclipse with anyone willing to listen, imploring said listeners to make plans in advance for themselves and loved ones because this will indeed be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The next significant total eclipse for America won’t happen again until 2045, and Ohio won’t witness another one until 2099. And for a little more perspective about these types of events, our country has experienced just twenty-one total solar eclipses since its inception!
For the uninitiated, a total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, completely obscuring the face of the sun. As the moon begins this passing, it appears “to take bites out of the sun” until it is gone at a moment called totality. At this time, the sky will appear darkened like dusk or dawn, so stars will be evident overhead and wildlife will be briefly confused, thinking and behaving as if nightfall is approaching. During totality, the sun’s corona will be visible, its rays radiating outward in hues of yellow and orange. Just before and just after totality, a phenomena called Baily’s beads will occur, where the moon’s surface of mountains and valleys juxtaposed against the disappearing sun will create a rippling effect along the edge of the eclipse. And, approximately ten to fifteen seconds before and after totality, a “diamond ring” will become visible: as the sun “disappears” — then “reappears” — it will dazzle like a diamond set in a ring. The path for a typical solar eclipse can be from 75 to 150 miles in width, and depending on the viewer’s position in the path, he or she can experience a few seconds of totality up to seven minutes. I will experience two minutes of totality here where I live outside Yellow Springs, Ohio, while others in the Miami Valley may experience up to four minutes.
Of course, safety is a concern anytime you are looking at the sun, so solar wear of some sort will be necessary: these can be simple paper glasses with lenses designed to filter dangerous visible rays, or solar binoculars (like I own), or telescopes utilizing specialized solar lenses. Even a pair of paper plates with a hole bored into one of them can make the experience enjoyable and memorable — though I really recommend the inexpensive solar glasses (buy them now!!).
To give you a little taste of the experience, I am posting a shortened version of a writing that I submitted to this blog back in 2018 titled “The Coolest Thing Ever Seen!” Of course, I encourage you to read that much longer submission (under the Naturelated tab) because in it I share many other cool things I have seen and witnessed. But minimally, you MUST read this section of it because it will give you just a little glimpse of what is to come, what will truly be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
In August of 2017, a solar eclipse was scheduled to bisect our country (okay, so there was no way to create a dramatic reveal here). In Dayton, Ohio, we were going to experience 89% of total. In doing a little research about places that would experience totality, I found a website called eclipse2017.org that proclaimed, “A partial eclipse is boring!” I already knew this to be true.
When I was a child, partial solar eclipse mania struck (the haircut I was sporting suggests it was 1970, research confirms it). I remember hearing about it from my elementary school teachers – in art class, we even made (and decorated!) our own viewing devices by not-so-ingeniously utilizing a pair of paper plates. The actual day of that eclipse was a Saturday in March (two weeks before my birthday), and I know I was excited. People talked about how dark it would get and how wildlife might be confused. So, around noon (the designated starting time) on March 7, 1970, I grabbed my viewing device – er, two paper plates – and headed outside to a beautiful, early spring day. I oriented one part of my viewing device – the paper plate with a pin prick in it (surrounded by a Peanuts scene with Snoopy and Charlie Brown), over part two of my viewing device – a blank paper plate. With a drum roll rat-a-tatting across my brain, I scanned the blank, white surface eagerly and saw, near the center, a bright yellow dot. As I looked closer, it was still a bright yellow dot.
My dad came outside, and noting my disappointment, explained that the event was just starting and that I should check back every fifteen minutes. So, with annoying kid patience, I checked back every couple of minutes, but the bright yellow dot was not changing.
Around 12:30, I noticed a slight alteration to the dot; something was nibbling on it. At 1:00, about a quarter of the dot was missing, but the rest of the world looked pretty normal. By 1:15, half of yellow dot was gone, and yet, birds and animals were doing nothing out of the ordinary. At 1:30 (at a maximum of almost 80% of totality), three-quarters of my dot were gone – and my neighborhood looked exactly as it had when I first came outside. Dad announced that the eclipse had reached totality, that this was as “dark” as it was going to get.
What a rip off (‘70s kidspeak)!!
What a waste of two perfectly good paper plates (except the cool Peanuts art)!
Disillusionment doesn’t adequately describe my disposition. I had wasted half (in kid time) of a perfectly beautiful spring day staring a yellow dot on a paper plate. And for what, to watch more than half of it disappear? This wasn’t a Mark Wilson magic trick (famous magician of my youth) – not even close!
On the evening news, reporters in Mexico revealed what a TOTAL total eclipse looked like: darkness, punctuated by more darkness. Frogs could be heard croaking, katydids filled the air with their chirping. Birds were said to be roosting (though the evening news provided no evidence of this). Those Mexicans were so lucky!!
That was my first eclipse experience – and frankly not a very good one. So, as the 2017 event neared, I vowed to myself that I was going to find a way to be in the Cone of Darkness.
Early in the 2017 summer, I conveyed to my buddies that it would be fun (and convenient!) to be on a golf course during the eclipse. They agreed, but most of them were content to be on a golf course in the Dayton area. That wasn’t going to be good enough for me (based on my prior experience), so I texted them information (golf courses and lodging) about a number of Kentucky and Tennessee locales that would experience 100% totality. Early in the summer, lodging prices were relatively normal in all of these areas, but as the days ticked by, those numbers started going up. I did my best to lure them with really good golf courses and/or cool cities (like Nashville, TN). But, none of them were biting, instead summoning a variety of excuses (too many people, it’s probably going to be disappointing, what if it rains?). These were all valid points, but I was determined to go, even if I had to go by myself.
One month before eclipse date (August 21), I finally decided that Nashville was my venue of choice. Motel prices had not spiked there yet, so I grabbed a room at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel downtown for two nights (definitely wanted to be within walking distance of some live music!). Though I was disappointed that I might be going alone (BTW, my wife was unavailable due to responsibilities at her work), I was definitely excited that my plan was solidified.
About a week later and after a round of golf with my regular group, someone introduced the eclipse to our discussion. I reiterated my Nashville strategy – which, of course, they were hearing for the first time – even though I had told the three of them this strategy at least three other times. Because it was NOW important to them, they were finally HEARING it. Friend-hearing rant aside, two of them still weren’t convinced that they wanted to get in “the zone,” but Bilbo (an alias, but close) was definitely interested, and so was his twin brother Frodo (another alias), who happened to live in Kentucky near the line of totality. Though I was excited about the prospect of a Music City eclipse, witnessing it with a couple of friends more than made up for it.
So, we had a new plan: Bilbo and I would drive down to Frodo’s house in Danville on Sunday, then drive over to Mineral Mound Golf Course near Eddyville in far western Kentucky to catch the eclipse on Monday.
Since I had been thinking about this celestial moment for much of the year, I felt I was quite prepared for it. I had already purchased special viewing glasses (20 pair of the cheap paper ones for friends and family, 1 nice GQ-style pair for myself) and #14 welding glass to place over my Nikon camera to snap off a few pictures during the event. Before heading south, I handed out glasses to all of the slackers – er, friends and family – who had waited too long to purchase their own (of course, making me even more heroic than usual).
I won’t bore you (any more than I already have) with details about our drive down to Danville, then the drive over to Mineral Mound State Park (where the golf course was located). But I will tell you that we had a nice evening of beers (me) and wine (Bilbo and Frodo) on Sunday evening, and that the three hour drive to Eddyville was surprisingly uneventful. We had expected very heavy traffic in Western Kentucky, but apparently everyone was already there and in place. Consequently, we arrived at the golf course two full hours before our one o’clock tee time, so we hung out on a very hot, very sunny patio staying beerdrated and mentally preparing for a round of golf that was going to include darkness and a long-expected solar event.
And we weren’t alone. Because it is a state park, Mineral Mound was packed with people. The park is perched on Lake Barkley, a body of water created by the dammed Cumberland River, and boats were visible for as far as the eye could see. Other people had pulled their cars into any place resembling a parking area, and were setting up lawn chairs and beach umbrellas for the big affair.
And, at high noon, the affair was on – well, at least a partial affair. Donning solar glasses, Bilbo, Frodo, and I craned our necks back and stared directly at ole Sol. A little sliver of the sun was being obscured by our moon – and this was a far better way than paper plates to witness it! We continued looking at the sun frequently as the moon continued to hide more and more of it. By 12:30, about half of the sun was gone, and dark smudges on its surface suggested visibility of at least a couple of transient sunspots – areas of the sun that are slightly cooler (6000°F) than the rest (10,000°F). Our excitement was now palpable!
Eventually, with our tee time looming (just a little after one o’clock), we headed to the practice green to get in a few putts, then made our way to the first tee. The eclipse itself seemed to be moving even faster, and we realized that totality might actually occur as we were playing our first hole, a 525 yard par five that doglegs left along Lake Barkley. More than three-quarters of the sun had disappeared as we hit our tee shots in what seemed to be full light, but as we walked to our balls, it was obvious that light was waning. Pulling out our glasses, we could see that totality was imminent, so we hit our second shots (now in a twilight) knowing that the full eclipse would occur before we could hit our approach shots into the green.
And that’s exactly what happened. By the time we reached our golf balls, the event was full on! I pulled on my glasses, plopped down on the ground, and grabbed my camera and welding glass from my golf bag. Totality was going to last about two minutes and forty seconds, so time was of the essence. I recognized immediately that I wasn’t as prepared as I thought, and realized (unfortunately) that I hadn’t practiced working this glass with my camera. I snapped a couple of awkward pictures, then gave up the effort. I wanted to see this spectacular solar moment with my own two eyes.
And spectacular it was! Words just can’t adequately describe the scene – yet I will try (and pictures don’t do it justice either). Though darkness wasn’t total, brighter stars were plainly visible and sounds of nocturnal creatures could be heard coming from the lake – along with human hoots and howls from the boats, and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” blasting from several speakers! The sky had taken on a deep blue hue along the horizon, but directly overhead it was pitch black. The sun’s corona, its outer atmosphere, was clearly evident, and just as the eclipse neared its end, a solar flare rose off the surface of the upper right quadrant. Then, as the sun began to emerge, Bailey’s Beads appeared (“beads” of light that emanate along the edges of the mountainous lunar surface at the eclipse’s beginning and end), followed quickly by the diamond ring effect in the lower left quadrant. With that, the “total” part of the eclipse was over.
Bilbo, Frodo, and I looked at one another – and we may have blurted at the same time, “That was the coolest thing EVER!!!” Once again cognizant that we were on a golf course, we hit our approach shots and continued our round, frequently stopping to pull out glasses, checking progress of the eclipse as it finished its work. Of course, we persisted in discussion about what we had witnessed, but we also had to focus on our golf games. We did enjoy the cute state park course, now made even more memorable because of what we experienced while playing it (and one of us managed to shoot a tidy 76 despite the otherworldly distraction!).
Now, I could finish here, but a postscript is necessary. After our round, rather than enjoy a celebratory beer, we decided to get on the road for the three hour drive back to Danville. We thought that perhaps because we had been on the golf course for more than four hours, we might not experience the immense traffic jam that had been predicted. But, we were wrong. As soon as we reached the Western Kentucky Parkway, we knew that its name was oh so appropriate – it was definitely a “park” way. Counting a one hour stop at a nice Mexican restaurant in Central City, it took us seven and a half very slow hours to make our way back to Bilbo’s house. However, as we crawled across Kentucky, we agreed that witnessing the eclipse was worth any driving pain we had to endure.
Well, there you go, the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Fortunately, another total eclipse is coming soon – well, soon enough anyway – so you’ll get another opportunity to experience the Cone of Darkness. And, if you happen to live local (as in the Dayton area), you won’t have to go far. In fact, for me, on Monday, April 8, 2024, my present home between Xenia and Yellow Springs will experience two full minutes of totality, and some nearby locales will enjoy four minutes! To help my fellow celestial citizens for that event, a twelve by twelve plot in my backyard is a going for a mere $100 a night right now (two night minimum). That number will definitely go up after the first of the year.
Oh, and to wet or whet (reader’s choice) your cosmological whistle now, on January 20, 2019, all of America will experience a total lunar eclipse for one full hour starting at 11:41 p.m. (penumbral duration from 9:36 p.m. to 2:48 a.m.). I guess I can’t gouge – er, help – my fellow man on that evening.
Maybe that lunar event will be your coolest thing ever seen – until 2024!!
