Total Solar Eclipse

Purkinje Effect during the 2024 total solar eclipse (Moose River/Jackman, Maine area)—April 8, 2024. Under this phenomenon, peak luminance shifts toward the blue end of the color spectrum. One can visibly see this shift at the Moon’s border.

Slowly, surely, as we sat [on the summit of Pike’s Peak in Colorado] watching, the moon crept on. The light of the Sun grew pale and gray. All yellow rays seemed to fade out of it, and the face of nature and of man took on a ghastly pallor. Two or three minutes before the totality of the eclipse the whole landscape before us was bathed in this cold white light. Then the gloom began to shroud the mountain tops—peak after peak was lost in shadow, and when it reached the plain it seemed to become a solid, palpable body of darkness, rising up in a great wall—not creeping, but rushing on with might and power… The face of the Sun was veiled. The heavens were dark…
—Mrs. Aubrey H. Smith’s description of the July 29, 1878 total solar eclipse

More than a century later, my observation bore remarkable similarity to the above account. By 2 pm EDT, as the onset of the solar eclipse neared, all of the earlier high clouds that had made passage across the sky had vanished. The sky had become perfectly clear in all directions. A gusty breeze had increased in strength.

At 2:18:55 pm, the Moon began cross the plane of the Sun and the eclipse got underway. The temperature began to fall and the wind picked up. Within a few minutes of Totality, the Sunlight grew noticeably dimmer.

Totality commenced at 3:29:50 pm. It was as if one turned off a light at night, instantly plunging oneself into darkness. The gathered people immediately fell silent, creating the impression that the Sun’s light had been the source of their energy. The previously stiff breeze seemed to die off. The temperature grew noticeably cooler from the loss of solar insolation and rapid onset of strong radiational cooling. The air was stripped of its remaining warmth.

Even as the crowd was connected in the experience, the reality that the Earth is little more than a speck in the seemingly endless ocean of an ever-expanding Universe became apparent. One was powerfully reminded that human society for all of its achievements and ambitions is still very small on a Cosmic scale.

During the mid-afternoon darkness, celebratory fireworks were launched in the distance. Although out-of-sight, their sound reverberated across the landscape.

As the total eclipse continued, it seemed that the passage of time itself had been suspended. One need not feel rushed to take in the celestial show. A giant prominence was visible near the bottom of the Moon’s shadow where its silhouette gave way to the white glow of the Sun’s corona.

For 3 minutes and 26.7 seconds, the Moon eclipsed the entirety of the Sun. Once the Sun burst free from behind the retreating Moon’s shadow, the gathered people erupted in applause. The brief but dazzling astronomical performance would leave lifelong memories.