Eclipse Walk II: Eclipse Harder
When I learned about today’s solar eclipse a few years back, I was disappointed that the path of totality would just barely miss Cincinnati, and I was tempted to drive north far enough to see it. When the day came, I didn’t feel up to undertaking such an expedition; in fact, I was pretty much planning to give it a miss, since I saw the last partial eclipse back in 2017. But as it turned out, it was a really nice day out and I felt like going for a walk anyway, and I still had my eclipse glasses from the last time, which seemed to be intact — kind of dusty, but that’s probably beneficial for eclipse glasses as long as they don’t have any scratches or pinholes. (The instructions printed on the glasses actually advise against cleaning them and say it’s unnecessary.) So I took a walk over to the park just down the street from my apartment in time to catch the maximum ten minutes or so of the eclipse.
As it turned out, even without driving north, I got to see something much closer to a total eclipse than last time. That was only 91%, but according to the online eclipse map I found, the obscuration from the park’s vantage point was a whopping 99.74%! Missed it by that much!
It’s interesting how it went, though. By the time I was getting ready for my walk, I noticed how much visibly softer the light from outside was — unlike evening light, because I was still getting direct sunlight reflected off the buildings opposite, but it was much milder. Yet when I went outside, it still looked like a clear, sunny day, just muted enough that I didn’t need sunglasses, like the last eclipse. That pretty much persisted once I reached the park and for minutes thereafter — even with just a C-shaped sliver of the sun visible through my eclipse glasses, the light still looked brighter than a cloudy day, and the sky was still a fairly light blue.
Once we reached the maximum, though, with less than a parenthesis of sunlight, the light dimmed quickly, almost to twilight levels, and the sky opposite the sun became a darker grayish-blue. I noticed the lights of the downtown skyscrapers peeking through the trees at the overlook end of the park. Yet then it started to brighten again just as quickly, getting visibly less dim as I watched my surroundings — even though the arc of sunlight was only a tiny bit wider, just changing angle as the Moon advanced.
I didn’t stick around long thereafter, since there’s this group of motorcyclists who like to ride up and down the street and into that little park making a great deal of noise with their engines, and they were commemorating the eclipse by doing the same more than usual, so I decided to retreat, since I don’t deal well with loud noises. Unfortunately, it turned out they were leaving the park anyway and they drove right past me on the single street in or out of it. I should’ve just stuck around a few more minutes. Even with my fingers in my ears, the noise shook my innards when they revved their engines right next to me. I’m sure this violates Cincinnati noise ordinances (I checked, and we do have them), but apparently enforcement thereof is lax in my neighborhood.
Now I’m a little disappointed I didn’t find somewhere to see totality, since it came so close. I only would’ve had to drive half an hour or so either way. But seeing 99.74% of an eclipse was still pretty interesting.
