Moments of totality: How Ars experienced the eclipse

Enlarge / Baily’s Beads are visible in this shot taken by Stephen Clark in Athens, Texas.Stephen Clark

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.”

The steady rhythm of the night-day, dark-light progression is a phenomenon acknowledged in ancient sacred texts as a given. When it’s interrupted, people take notice. In the days leading up to the eclipse, excitement within the Ars Orbiting HQ grew, and plans to experience the last total eclipse in the continental United States until 2045 were made. Here’s what we saw across the country.

Kevin Purdy (watched from Buffalo, New York)
3:19 pm on April 8 in Buffalo overlooking Richmond Ave. near Symphony Circle. Kevin Purdy
A view of First Presbyterian Church from Richmond Avenue in Buffalo, NY. Kevin Purdy
The cloudy, strange skies at 3:12 pm Eastern time in Buffalo on April 8. Kevin Purdy
A kind of second sunrise at 3:21 p.m. on April 8 in Buffalo. Kevin Purdy
A clearer view of the total eclipse from Colden, New York, 30 minutes south of Buffalo on April 8, 2024. Sabrina May

Buffalo, New York, is a frequently passed-over city. Super Bowl victories, the shift away from Great Lakes shipping and American-made steel, being the second-largest city in a state that contains New York City: This city doesn’t get many breaks.

So, with Buffalo in the eclipse’s prime path, I, a former resident and booster, wanted to be there. So did maybe a million people, doubling the wider area’s population. With zero hotels, negative Airbnbs, and no flights below trust-fund prices, I arrived early, stayed late, and slept on sofas and air mattresses. I wanted to see if Buffalo’s moment of global attention would go better than last time.

The day started cloudy, as is typical in early April here. With one hour to go, I chatted with Donald Blank. He was filming an eclipse time-lapse as part of a larger documentary on Buffalo: its incredible history, dire poverty, heroes, mistakes, everything. The shot he wanted had the First Presbyterian Church, with its grand spire and Tiffany windows, in the frame. A 200-year-old stone church adds a certain context to a solar event many of us humans will never see again.

The sky darkened. Automatic porch lights flicked on at 3:15 pm, then street lights, then car lights, for those driving to somehow more important things. People on front lawns cheered, clapped, and quietly couldn’t believe it. When it was over, I heard a neighbor say they forgot their phone inside. Blank walked over and offered to email her some shots he took. It was very normal in Buffalo, even when it was strange.

Benj Edwards (Raleigh, North Carolina)
Benj’s low-tech, but creative way of viewing the eclipse. Benj Edwards
So many crescents. Benj Edwards

I’m in Raleigh, North Carolina, and we were lucky to have a clear day today. We reached peak eclipse at around 3:15 pm (but not total eclipse, sadly), and leading up to that time, the sun slowly began to dim as I looked out my home office window. Around 3 pm, I went outside on the back deck and began crafting makeshift pinhole lenses using cardboard and a steel awl, poking holes so that myself and my kids could see the crescent shape of the eclipse projected indirectly on a dark surface.

My wife had also bought some eclipse glasses from a local toy store, and I very briefly tried them while squinting. I could see the eclipse well, but my eyes were still feeling a little blurry. I didn’t trust them enough to let the kids use them. For the 2017 eclipse, I had purchased very dark welder’s lenses that I have since lost. Even then, I think I got a little bit of eye damage at that time. A floater formed in my left eye that still plagues me to this day. I have the feeling I’ll never learn this lesson, and the next time an eclipse comes around, I’ll just continue to get progressively more blind. But oh what fun to see the sun eclipsed.

Beth Mole (Raleigh, North Carolina)Enlarge / Another view from Raleigh.Beth Mole

It was a perfect day for eclipse watching in North Carolina—crystal clear blue sky and a high of 75. Our peak was at 3:15 pm with 78.6 percent sun coverage. The first hints of the moon’s pass came just before 2 pm. The whole family was out in the backyard (alongside a lot of our neighbors!), ready with pin-hole viewers, a couple of the NASA-approved cereal-box viewers, and eclipse glasses. We all watched as the moon progressively slipped in and stole the spotlight. At peak coverage, it was noticeably dimmer and it got remarkably cooler and quieter. It was not nearly as dramatic as being in the path of totality, but still really neat and fun. My 5-year-old had a blast watching the sun go from circle to bitten cookie to banana and back again.

Jonathan Gitlin (Washington, DC)Enlarge / Colander as pinhole camera.Jonathan M. Gitlin

If you asked me this morning, I was a bit blasé about the eclipse. DC would only get a partial eclipse with 87 percent coverage, and I was able to see one of those last October in the middle of a sportscar race. Luckier still, in 1999, I saw, through some hazy clouds, a total solar eclipse on a ship in the middle of the English Channel. In fact, I was so indifferent to today’s eclipse in the lead-up that I gave away some eclipse glasses to a friend, thinking I’d have no need for them.

But when it starts getting unreasonably dark outside at far too early an hour, it’s hard to resist the temptation to go and see what’s going on. With no eclipse glasses on hand, we resorted to both old-school and high-tech methods of viewing the sun getting mostly eaten by the Moon. While it’s hard to argue with an array of crescent-shaped shadows cast by the round holes in a colander, the video recorded by my iPhone wasn’t too shabby either.

Andrew Cunningham (Philadelphia)Enlarge / Eclipse as seen from Philadelphia at 3:12 pm EDT.Andrew Cunningham

My kid’s preschool sent everyone home after a half-day today for eclipse viewing. I didn’t think to acquire glasses until it was too late to do it, but we took a recently emptied box of Corn Chex and went outside around 2:45 pm anyway to see what we could see.

I was worried for a bit that the cloud cover here would be too heavy for us to see anything, but we managed to get a few minutes where it was shining through strongly enough that our Chex viewer worked perfectly. My kid did a… mostly fine job of not staring at the sun, and in any case, it doesn’t seem to have affected his ability to watch Bluey.

Philadelphia was scheduled to hit about 90 percent coverage at 3:23 pm, at which point the clouds were too heavy to see much of anything. We didn’t get the cool nighttime effect that people in the totality zone did—it just looked super overcast, which wasn’t very strange because it was overcast. But around 10 minutes before that, the sun was screened by just enough cloud cover that I could get a good phone-camera picture of it.

The few people walking up and down our street didn’t care enough about the eclipse to pause and look, but all my Discords and Slacks with any kind of East Coast or Midwest contingent were all popping off about the same thing at the same time. Pretty neat!

Aurich Lawson (Los Angeles)Enlarge / A handful of crescents.Aurich Lawson

We didn’t get much of the eclipse in Southern California, maybe a third or so of the sun was obscured. But the crescent we got let me see one of my favorite things about partial eclipses.

When I was a kid, it really blew my noggin to realize the dappled shadows under trees were actually projecting the shape of the sun. We see it almost every day, and don’t really think about it, because that’s just what soft shadows through leaves look like.

But when you see the ground covered in little crescents through the pinholes, the pattern of the leaves reveals it pulls back the curtain on that everyday phenomenon and reminds you how cool the daily world around you really is.

I did have a pair of eclipse glasses, I did look up and see the sun, but the shape of the sun projected onto my hand was more magical to me than looking up.

Kyle Orland (Cleveland)
Kyle has his eclipse glasses handy, and he really knows where his towel is at. Kyle Orland
Kyle helpfully points out the eclipse. Kyle Orland

For the last week or so, I’ve been obsessively checking the forecast for our Airbnb just outside Cleveland to see if we’d need to desperately try to outrun cloud cover during the eclipse. All week those forecasts were calling for chilly conditions with either cloudy or partly cloudy conditions (depending on when I checked the forecast). So of course, when the day came, we got 69° F weather with only a thin layer of high clouds that didn’t block our view at all. Go figure.

The move from partial to total eclipse felt like it dragged on after a while. Don’t get me wrong; it’s cool to see the sun turn slowly into a crescent moon shape through approved glasses. But the “slowly” part of that equation meant I started to get a little impatient waiting for totality to come. We bided our time by munching on popcorn, taking photos, and observing some extremely sharp shadows developing near the end of the wait.

When the big moment arrived, I was panning a video from friends and family gathered in a suburban front yard to the quickly shrinking point of light in the sky. But the phone image, of course, didn’t do justice to the extremely sharp ring of light I could see in the now-dark sky. My 9-year-old started running around screaming, “This is crazy!” as I stared at the beads of light peeking out around the edge of the eclipse. Near the low point of the sun there was a bright red point that we guessed was a solar flare coming off the “bottom” of the sun (maybe our space correspondents can confirm?).

I was surprised how quickly the temperature cooled down even before totality, and happy to get some relief after sitting in 70° weather for over an hour. I was also surprised by how many confused birds seemed to appear out of nowhere during totality, flying in low, erratic patterns over the suburban yards.

In the end, I don’t think I’ll become one of those people who flies around the world chasing down as many eclipse experiences as I can. But I’m still glad I got to see this relatively rare occurrence for myself and that my week-long worrying about cloud cover was for naught.

Stephen Clark (Athens, Texas)Enlarge / Totality in Texas.Stephen Clark

Seeing a once-in-a-lifetime event for a second time really takes the edge off.

In 2017, my wife and I traveled with some friends to catch that year’s total solar eclipse. Until the night before, we weren’t sure where we would end up. Seemingly, every hour, our group would be checking the latest computer model or satellite picture to find the place in Wyoming or Idaho with the best chance of clear skies. In the end, we found ourselves in the right place at the right time, and we banked the memory.

On Monday, the path of totality crossed my hometown of Athens, Texas. For more than a week, the forecast looked bleak, with cloud cover blanketing the state from the Rio Grande to the Red River. But I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see this eclipse with my parents and family, so despite the temptation of going somewhere with better weather, I decided to stick it out in rural East Texas, freeing myself from the stress and burden of eclipse chasing.

The decision paid off. Despite some early morning anxiety over the evolving cloud conditions, the day’s biggest patch of blue sky appeared overhead a few minutes before totality. I invited aunts, cousins, and friends to view it from my backyard, and the payoff was sweet. Shadows became fuzzy, and the fading light turned the flourishing green landscape to a soft sepia tone. Then, the lights went out. On cue, there was a collective gasp, camera shutters started clicking, and someone exclaimed, “Oh my God.”

Incredibly, just before totality, it was clear enough to see Baily’s Beads, the flickering sunlight passing through the mountains and valleys of the Moon. with the darkness, red-hot tongues of plasma appeared around the edge of the Sun. These prominences are larger than Earth, a fact I eagerly shared with anyone around me who would listen.

The temperature noticeably cooled during the 2 minutes and 40 seconds of darkness. We watched from our family’s farm, and I took a moment to see if the livestock in a nearby field responded to the event, but I couldn’t pick up much of a reaction as they continued grazing. A stray cloud passed in front of the Sun in the final seconds of totality, and daylight returned. The only sacrifice here: A few minutes of time we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.

One of my cousins said he was “floored” by the experience. “I’ve never seen anything close to that. Being able to witness it here, in East Texas, there’s something cool about that,” he said. “I think the coolest part was seeing the flare at the bottom, that bright spot; that was neat.”

“I would say I was non-plussed by it until it was at full totality,” said a friend who took in the event with us. “This whole week, I’ve been kind of a little jaded about it. Once it actually hit totality, I was like, ‘Oh, I understand now.’ Once you hit that moment, it is worth it.”

A few minutes after the Moon’s shadow passed over us, my mother said: “We saw the beauty of it, and the rarity of it, and I will never see another one. I don’t figure anybody here will.”

John Timmer (Effingham, Illinois)
Just before the celestial festivities kicked off in central Illinois. Louise R. Howe
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Just a sliver. Louise R. Howe
Totality. Louise R. Howe
As totality ended. Louise R. Howe
On the way back to normal. Louise R. Howe

I’ve had phenomenal luck with three partial eclipses—blazing blue skies that allowed me to step outside from work throughout the day to track the progress.  And they were interesting. Your brain (or at least my brain) finds it fundamentally unsettling to have so many indications that it’s midday while experiencing the dimness of dusk.

Traveling to see totality was something that initially didn’t register as an option. But over the years, I spoke to a number of people who had, and absolutely none of them voiced an instant of doubt about having done so. In some difficult-to-describe manner, they gave me the impression that totality is in a whole different category. I wanted in on it.

Unfortunately, something that was never a problem when partial eclipses came to me turned out to be an issue when I wanted to see one: the weather. The original plan was to spend the night before next to an interstate near Pittsburgh, which would put a big crescent of eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania within reach. I could check the forecast on the morning of the eclipse and pick the destination with the best weather. But, as the big day approached, Eric Berger’s daily updates made it clear that the best weather was somewhere else entirely.  We were all looking enviously at the large hole in the clouds developing over Eric Bangeman’s intended destination: central Illinois.

So, after a mad scramble to rearrange plans, I ended up in a public park just inside the line of totality in central Illinois. I was committed, and the weather cooperated—just thin wisps of high clouds that the sun shone right through.

Until it didn’t.

Totality is, in fact, a tough experience to describe because there are so many inputs competing for your attention. There’s the bizarre darkness at ground level and nighttime activities starting in midday, like automatic streetlights turning on. There’s the lack of warmth at midday, even as the parking lot was still radiating heat from the now-vanished sunshine. There’s the overall sweep of the sky, with darkness toward the line of deepest totality and brighter blue off in the opposite direction. And then there’s the actual eclipse itself, which looked remarkably like all the best pictures you’ve ever seen of one. And all of that’s competing for your attention with the annoying part of your brain that’s telling you to take it all in because it’s going to be gone in a minute or two.

Layered on top of that are the emotions: the awe at what’s going on, the relief that the weather cooperated, the satisfaction that everything came together for you to be there.

It’s a lot to take in all at once, and I’m still digesting it.

Eric Bangeman (Effingham, Illinois)
Eclipse watchers in Effingham’s Community Park. Eric Bangeman
Eric (left) and John (right) squinting despite the lessened sunlight in Effingham, Illinois. Kerry Bangeman

The two eclipses I’ve seen so far were not that impressive. The first was the annular eclipse of 1994, and I honestly can’t remember much about it. For the total eclipse of 2017, I thought about making the six-hour drive from one end of Illinois to another to watch it in Carbondale but ended up staying home and stepping outside to observe the rare astronomical event under disappointingly cloudy skies.

This time, given a favorable forecast, access to our family’s place outside of Shelbyville. (99.3 percent eclipse coverage and 30 miles from the edge of totality), and a 21-year wait until the next total eclipse visible from the continental US, we decamped to downstate Illinois, joined at the last minute by Ars Science Editor John Timmer and his wife (who took the pictures in the gallery above.

When we arrived at Community Park in Effingham about 15 minutes before the beginning of the eclipse (about 12:45 pm CDT, with totality occurring at 2:03 pm), there were maybe a dozen people there. By the time of totality, there were maybe 70 people sitting on lawn chairs or laying on their backs and gazing at the sun through eclipse glasses. What clouds there were in the sky were close to the horizon, making for ideal viewing conditions.

Noticing the sunlight, unfiltered by clouds, growing dimmer was odd. As totality neared, it suddenly felt like dusk, and I noticed streetlights coming on. I was torn between the competing desire to watch the Sun be swallowed by the Moon or look around to take in the effects of the sudden, early-afternoon evening.

And 40 seconds later, it was over.

Despite understanding what was happening and why, I still felt a sense of awe and wonder. Perhaps the most unexpected feeling was seeing Venus make a brief cameo in the darkened sky on a 73° April afternoon. It felt wrong on a visceral level, and I could relate to the dread ancient people must have felt watching the sun gradually disappear and darkness fall.

Aaron Zimmerman (somewhere in Indiana via Slack)

Saw the totality, fucking amazing, holy shit.

Did you watch the eclipse? We’d love to hear about your experiences viewing it and see your photos in the discussion thread!

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