If you have been reading along the past week, you may be wondering whether we actually got to see the total eclipse or not. As my dad used to say, "Get with it, girl!"
Why yes. Yes we did see the total eclipse. And it was grand.
The day before the eclipse, we were out at sea on the Costa Classica, and there was a rehearsal for the eclipse. The organizers wanted to show everyone that there would be plenty of room on deck for everyone to fit their tripods and other gear to get a good view of the eclipse, which would be over our heads, so as long as you were out on the deck, you would be able to see it. They warned people not to try to lay claim to a particular spot on the boat, and that eclipse day would be "first come, first serve" for spots.
This warning did not stop people from setting up their tripods in opportune spots, or leaving pleading notes not to remove particular deck chairs, or, as in the case of the group from MIT, roping off an entire section of the deck, pissing off the early morning joggers on the top deck.
It also did not stop an elderly couple from removing an Indian couple's tripod from a chair and having the Indian couple come back and get into a huge fight with them over said chair. A burly man in a backwards baseball cap intervened before fists flew. He tried valiantly to calm them down with a "Why can't we all just get along" Rodney King-ish speech, but they would have nothing to do with it and stood their ground. The ship's crew finally brought out another deck chair and squeezed it into the space, where the disgruntled parties sat side-by-side during the whole 2 hour show.
Aside from that little scene, the eclipsers were a pretty happy lot. We had the fortune of setting up next to Craig, an astronomer from the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. He was friendly and knowledgeable, and was in search of the elusive "shadow bands" that sometimes appear at the end of an eclipse. Before meeting him, I would have thought "shadow bands" were rock groups that played cover songs in really dimly lit clubs.
Frank had scoped out our spot the day before at the rear of the boat, and I sat in a deck chair most of the morning guarding our spot like lazy mama bear guarding her den. It was a beautiful day, with lovely cloud formations in the distance, but clear skies overhead.
We sat next to our new friends from Los Gatos, near the rear pool, with the notion that we could toss unruly kids into the pool if they started to annoy the serious astronomers. At about 10 am, a guy near us started booming out "First Contact in Wuhan! First Contact in Wuhan! First Contact on the Earth!" For some reason, I kept thinking of Monty Python's "Bring Out Your Dead! Bring Out Your Dead" and it kind of cracked me up the first 10 times he said it. He persisted, and I seriously wanted to toss him in the pool, since I didn't really care if people in Wuhan were seeing the eclipse before me.
Finally, first contact appeared in our sky and the crowd cheered.
I admit, this is a crappy image. I didn't have a tri-pod, and was balancing a bit of filtered glass on my camera so I wouldn't burn out my retinas. Prior to totality, you have to look at the eclipse through special filtered glasses to protect your eyes. When I finally took off the lens hood (duh!), it looked much clearer through my camera lens.
Alex and Frank made their own pinhole camera to see the eclipse shape in the shadows. Look through their fingers and you can see the same shapes on the ground that were in the sky.
After about an hour, we finally saw Bailey's Beads emerge, three bumps at the bottom of the sun. I am not astronomy photographer by a longshot, but even the professionals can't really capture the quality of the light that appears in the sky and how breathtaking it is to witness this.
The diamond ring appeared at the top a little later. Again, no image does it justice.
I looked around after totality was established, and all around us was stillness and twilight. It was a beautiful sight to behold, with the clouds in the distance and golden light ringing the ship. Something about this is so magical it's hard to describe in words or in images. It's a scene you hold in your mind's eye long after it's gone. It's the reason that so many people would travel halfway around the world to catch 6 minutes of totality and be absolutely resolute in the desire to witness it again.
I was reminded of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins in a poem I learned in high school called God's Grandeur:
I'm not quite sure what happened with my camera, but it caught this image, that Frank and I joked was the "eye of God" looking down on us. We're not particularly religious people, but there are things on this earth that fill you with such awe that you have to wonder whose hand is at work to make such wonderful things happen, or whose unblinking eye is watching over you.
