Indianapolis, IN – For the past few weeks, Kaleb Boone, 9, has been mapping the sky. He has mapped, he has measured, he has made plans and he has carefully watched the weather. The reason why is simple. It’s what every astronomer should do in anticipation of a major cosmic event.
When the comet 12P/Pons-Brooks boomerangs return to us after decades of entering the outer solar system, scientists will be ready to capture it in action thanks to their carefully prepared calculations. When the giant star Betelgeuse reaches its tipping point and one day it will burst, even though we don’t know when that day will be, there is a structure in place to keep all those juicy supernova details from being lost. However, Boone has his eye on perhaps the most beloved space muse of them all: our star, the sun.
He tries to find the best place for him and his family to watch the movie 2024 total embezzlement of the sun, when the moon will cross between our planet and the front of its golden-yellow anchor, pouring a lucky streak of Earth during the day into a few moments of the night. Fortunately, Boone is already in Indiana, a state that obviously falls within that line. Still, a key question remains: Is one part of Indiana’s totality path better than another?
“I’m at the zoo,” Brandi Tracey told Space.com. She will be with her small children, hoping to witness what non-humans might be thinking during this strange phenomenon.
Related: I’m going to Indiana to prove me wrong about solar eclipses on April 8
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I can’t shake the feeling that we humans almost worship solar eclipses for the existential reminder they offer us – that the entire Earth is a spaceship swinging everyone around the sun, and that a powder-gray sphere has probably always been with us. As far as it seems, the moon is our planet’s closest and very best friend. But would an otter care about all that? Let alone an otter living in a zoo? A fish? A capybara? A turtle?
“The birds go in and the bats come out,” said Jane Rigby, senior project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, Space.com told us. Reflecting on her experience of the totality of the 2017 solar eclipse, she said it was perhaps the most profound moment she has ever been a part of. The word she used was ‘alien’.
“It’s a very emotionally intense time,” she says. “People were screaming, people were crying, I saw the young children looking at the adults.”
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Rigby had the Solar eclipse of 2017 from a farm with about 60 other people. Suddenly it was as if the air had frozen during those precious few minutes when the moon completely blocked the sunlight from reaching it. “There was a part of my brain stem, the part that evolved to run from sabre-toothed cats, that told me in all caps, ‘Oh my god, the sun will be eaten. Now run away,” she said, laughing.
And while this time she’ll be gazing skyward from Indiana to watch another beautiful space flight strike, she made sure one thing stayed the same: “It’s actually the first business trip I’ve ever been on with my family,” she said. “We felt like we had to see it together.” It’s a theme that seems to resonate with many Indiana residents hoping to catch a glimpse of the totality.
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Megan Philip goes babysitting, but that doesn’t stop her from taking her 8-year-old step-grandson outside to see the silhouette of the moon, and Amy Bare will be on a houseboat with her loved ones when our sun gets a rare replenishment of its social battery. Karena Lopez, who saw the 2017 solar eclipse as a partial solar eclipse, has a foggy memory of the event. However, that’s all the more reason for her to take mental note of this as it happens. She will probably just be home during totality, but she will “definitely” go outside.
The list goes on. Some eclipse watchers will be clinking their glasses in a winery while discussing their mild skepticism about how important this will really be, some will be chilling at an area resort preparing articles about their internal monologue, and some will just be exist wherever unchanged life takes them. But I haven’t met anyone who expects to be alone, which was honestly surprising to me. An experience with as much weight as this can, I think, be enhanced when you’re alone. I’ve heard the terms “I eclipse” and “we eclipse” before, and so far it’s felt like Indiana is a “we eclipse” state. This is not about the vantage point, but about the energy.
Fascinatingly, the “me versus us” debate reminds Rigby of the way people view spirituality. For some, religion is very personal, but for others it is about community. She wonders whether those who follow religion would choose the corresponding eclipse experience.
Laura McPhee, owner of an extremely charming bookstore in Indiana called Pen and Pink, reminisces about the last time she saw a total solar eclipse. It was the 1999 solar eclipse that happened to wash over Paris while she was studying feminist literature there. “The moon completely obscured the sun for just under three minutes,” she said. “It was the last total solar eclipse of the 20th century, and also of the second millennium.”
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Crowds of people had gathered on the parchment-colored steps of Sacré Coeur, and she vividly remembers how sharply the temperature dropped during totality, just as Rigby said. But what seems to remain, at least based on my interpretation of her anecdote, is that other people noticed also the temperature drop. Being cold during those minutes of totality was not a private feeling, and there were gasps, cries of wonder, and camera flashes to prove it. It’s not often that you can be so sure that you are connected to a stranger through your unspoken thoughts.
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Rigby is one of the eclipse chasers in limbo, who isn’t sure where she’ll be when totality occurs (especially since she accidentally booked a flight back to DC a few hours after totality is expected to begin ). rebooking her flight, maybe, she thinks, she’ll find herself on the roof of the airport car rental facility. As unglamorous as that sounds, she isn’t worried. Uncertainty is part of being an astronomer; you never know when clouds might get in the way of your observations, or when the data will change what you thought was standard, boring knowledge.
And after all, one of the best things about a solar eclipse is that everyone has a front row seat to the sky. So perhaps the ideal vantage point is simply wherever you are.
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