Its Only a Solar Eclipse Love Sun Is Coming Back Again
"I've always been interested in astronomy. I call back watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, on a blackness and white television, in 1969. And I remember we had a Ladybird book on space in the house and I loved the pictures in it.
y male parent bought me my first telescope in 1973. I pointed information technology at the brightest star in the sky and found out information technology was Jupiter.
And so, in 1990, I bought a mammoth Newtonian telescope with a colonnade mountain that weighed about 10st. I put it in the garden and spent years but observing.
A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon completely covers the sun and casts a shadow over part of the Earth. People like me and my married woman Valerie, or 'eclipse chasers' as we are known, travel to specific parts of the earth at specific times to witness the miracle.
My first experience of a full solar eclipse was in August 1999. Astronomy Ireland arranged for a group of 60 Irish gaelic people to travel to
Bulgaria's Black Sea Coast, and none of united states had e'er seen a full solar eclipse before.
There were thousands of people on the embankment in a tiny town called Shabla. We were given a pair of eclipse glasses for the partial phases — it's dangerous to look at an eclipse with the naked eye — and then nosotros waited for the announcement of 'first contact', which is when the moon touches the sun.
It took a whole hour for the moon to get from 1 side of the dominicus to the other. I remember at that place was somebody there with a laptop and timer and he knew the precise seconds at which the solar eclipse was going to occur.
Eventually, the lord's day became a crescent and someone screamed 'eclipse spectacles off'. The last tiny piece of sun disappeared behind a lunar valley and when someone gave me their binoculars, I could see streamers coming out of the sun.
It lasted 2 minutes and 22 seconds and we were all in a state of utter awe.
Some people were screaming, as if someone had merely scored a goal for Manchester United or Liverpool. Some people were paralysed, they just couldn't move.
Somebody had a tape recording of the upshot and when I listened back, I could hear myself shouting 'Maximum magnificence!' at the top of my voice.
Afterward that experience, I knew I had to see the next full solar eclipse in Lusaka, Zambia in 2001. I didn't even accept a PC at the time, but I managed to get in contact with Paul, a friend from Lusaka who I had met at our Baptist church building in Dublin.
When I arrived at the aerodrome in Lusaka, I could hear people singing and welcoming the tourists. I discovered that the president of Zambia had made the date of the full solar eclipse — June 21 — a national vacation.
It was a huge deal. They were talking most the eclipse every single night from 8pm to 10pm on Zambian tv set.
On the twenty-four hour period of the eclipse, we went to a field in Fringilla, in the n of Lusaka, where at that place were 5,000 people camping ground and a rave political party going on.
Most of the people were first-timers. I met two Finnish guys and they told me they had taken five flights to get there.
It's funny, Paul is such a cool and laid-dorsum guy, but when he witnessed his first total solar eclipse, he became a totally different person. He couldn't believe what he was witnessing.
In March 2006, a group of six of united states of america, including my at present-wife Valerie, travelled to Nigeria for my next total solar eclipse.
I initially met Valerie shortly after my beginning eclipse. She remembers thinking, 'This guy is crazy', and she said she never thought she'd end up marrying me.
But something inverse on that trip. She experienced her first total solar eclipse and I began to see her in a different light. I proposed the following Nov.
After getting married, Valerie and I began to travel the globe together to witness full solar eclipses. We travelled to Siberia in Baronial 2008 and saw the eclipse on a beach surrounded by birch trees. It was the most beautiful site to run across an eclipse.
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Aubrey Glazier with his eclipse glasses. Photo: Gerry Mooney
In 2009, we experienced the longest eclipse of the century in the Sea of Nihon. We were on an enormous cruise ship, the Costa Classica, with 900 people, many of them astronomers.
I call back one of the astronomers getting upward to deliver a talk and maxim: 'You lot know we're all nuts, don't you?' The travel organiser kept maxim we were 'going for the bullseye'.
The eclipse was going to last six minutes and 42 seconds, but there was a point on the Earth where the eclipse lasted longest, and that's where he had us positioned.
That particular eclipse was amazing. Venus was like a headlamp in the sky and, fifty-fifty subsequently totality had finished, Venus was still shining in the sky for 20 minutes.
In July 2010, nosotros were on Ana'a atoll, a beautiful coral island almost Tahiti, to see my sixth total solar eclipse. In 2012, nosotros were in Cairns, Australia.
In 2013, nosotros were in the mid-Atlantic Ocean on another cruise. And then, in 2015, we flew to Denmark to experience the eclipse from an aeroplane with 60 other eclipse chasers.
We were up to a higher place the clouds and somewhere between Iceland and the Faro Islands when nosotros saw a 3 minute and 40 2d eclipse from an shipping window. It was 1 of the near intense I've always seen — the corona [the atmosphere of the sun] was so white and almost dazzling.
In 2017, we were in Wyoming in a town called Lander. Information technology was called 'The Corking American Eclipse' because the Americans love to hype things up. In 2019, nosotros were in Argentina.
Valerie and I are evangelical Christians and nosotros attend Grosvenor Road Baptist Church. We both read The Bible , which nosotros believe is God's word, every day.
I e'er think, if God had non decided to brand the sun and the moon announced the same size in the sky, would we be husband and married woman today?
Whenever we see an eclipse, all we want to do is come home and tell everyone. When in that location was a fractional eclipse over Ireland back in June, we handed out eclipse glasses to our neighbours.
I was almost as excited as I was when I saw my commencement full eclipse because I was getting to share the experience with people.
Witnessing eclipses used to punctuate my life, but then some other corona struck… Now, I don't know when, or if, nosotros'll travel again. In saying that, I'm and then grateful for the 11 total solar eclipses I've seen. Valerie has seen nine — more than than whatever other Irish woman.
Everyone should try to run into a total solar eclipse, even once in their life. It's as if life starts over again when you see i. Information technology's like y'all've just entered a new stage in your life.
When someone tells me they're a get-go-timer, I always say: 'Y'all're in for it.' And then, of class, people keep chasing them considering of the intense dazzler of the feel."
As told to Katie Byrne
Source: https://www.independent.ie/regionals/dublin/lifestyle/total-eclipse-chasers-everyone-should-try-to-see-one-its-like-life-starts-again-40803160.html
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