Chasing eclipses offers thrills of a lifetime

Michael Rogers Columnist • Profile • E-mail

I was just out of college and writing for Rolling Stone when the editors decided they needed an article about an upcoming total solar eclipse — the longest total solar eclipse until 2150. Unfortunately, though, this eclipse was going to best be seen dead center in the Sahara Desert.

Since I was the youngest and perhaps most naive writer on staff I was asked to volunteer. It sounded like fun, so I joined an amateur scientific expedition that planned to fly into the Sahara via DC-3 and do a little camping.

A month later, staggering around in the 120 degree heat of central Mauritania — a nation so desolate that thrice conquered in recent history, it has thrice been returned to the locals — I was reassessing my decision. Between the stunning heat, dust-storms, looting forays by the soldiers hired to protect us, thousands of desiccated goat carcasses from a long-term drought, and rampant dysentery, this bore no resemblance to anything I’d even remotely characterize as “fun.” And to top it off, I was surrounded by several hundred amateur scientists who were so utterly obsessed with the upcoming solar event that the only time they stopped talking about neutral density filters, beam-splitters and Questars was to say “Pass the water bottle.” For a rock-and-roll journalist from the cool climes of San Francisco, this brought new meaning to the phrase bad trip.

But then the eclipse happened, and I was forever changed.

What I’d failed to understand until that moment is that the difference between a total solar eclipse and the partial solar eclipses I vaguely recalled from my childhood is quite literally the difference between night and day.

When you’re standing dead-on in the shadow of a total solar eclipse, you can stare straight up at the moon covering the sun, a small black circle in a darkened sky, surrounded by the glowing solar corona gases flaring out against a scattered backdrop of stars. The wind shifts, the birds grow silent, and around you the barely visible landscape seems suspended and other-worldly. And, in the case of that Sahara eclipse, the locals began to chant “Allah tlaq eshems” — Allah release the sun — even though from the tourist perspective Allah could hold onto the sun just as long as He pleased.

After nearly seven minutes of charged desert darkness, the sun suddenly exploded into life on the other side of the moon and the partial phases began to wind down. I was hooked: it was the most remarkable sight I’d ever seen in nature, and within a few minutes, I really, really, wanted to see another one.  Thus I joined the motley crew of “eclipse chasers,” as we are genteelly called — although I think “addict” gets closer to the truth. 

With only six totals to my credit I’m a novice compared to many of the people I’ve met along the eclipse trail — it’s not uncommon to find eclipse chasers with ten or fifteen eclipses notched on their telescopes. But I also figured out early on that this habit might get very expensive when a magazine wasn’t bankrolling the experience. Nice long solar eclipses usually pick very inconvenient places to happen: the middle of oceans, deserts, arctic tundra and similar locales where discount airfare is rare. Thus I set some guidelines. Total eclipses come in varying lengths, from only a few seconds to a theoretical maximum of just over seven minutes, so I decided to limit my excursions to those lasting over three minutes — plenty of time to savor the awe and wonder of the event. 

MORE FROM SPACE

Space Section Front

Eclipse enthusiasts rejoice in August   NASA spacecraft reveal cause of auroras Scientists discover Jupiter-sized planet Satellite designed to spot asteroid Armageddon Cosmic Log: Rockets boosted by fashion Mars lander pulls all-nighter A star explodes in the sky, but nobody sees it ... Solar systems like ours may be rare Dwarf planet named for Polynesian god Shooting stars on tap for summer Space Section Front   Add Space headlines to your news reader: