VICTORIA ZOOMS IN ON MONDAY ECLIPSE
Iwalked out midmorning 10 or so days ago, and things felt askew. For a period then, the sunlight’s rosy glow signalled the untimely sloping hours of either very early morning or late evening — not bright, midmorning coffee time.
The light we saw during those days had little to do with the sun, and everything to do with the atmospheric conditions between us and the sun. Winds from the northeast pushed smoke from the B.C. Interior to the coast. Particles of ash, soot and dust in the smoke absorbed part of sunlight’s spectrum. Dimmer sunny days, rosy light, an apricot-coloured sun, and dramatic sunrises and sunsets resulted.
The shadows outside my office belied the light’s long wavelengths. The shadows sat upright and uptight — exactly as they should in the middle of an August morning.
We’ve encountered another unusual atmospheric phenomenon in recent weeks. In mid-July, a night-time light show danced across the region’s dark skies. The colourful curtains and shimmers of aurora are common at more northerly latitudes, but rarely seen here.
Aurora are caused by charged solar particles that have been swept through space to scattershot against Earth’s magnetosphere. This great, curving magnetic shield protects the planet, its life and all of our computer and electrical systems from much of the dangerous short-wave radiation that swirls through space. The auroral colours indicate what molecules the solar particles are interacting with in the upper limits of our atmosphere.
In more superstitious times, folk would have assigned added meaning to these sky phenomena. The ruddy sun, midday lit with evening light, and, in these parts, rare dancing northern lights would have prompted our ancestors to look worriedly around and read these signs as omens of impending disaster or a worldchanging event. The phenomena would indicate a world turned topsyturvy and disordered, with who knows what about to happen.
On that note, I warn you that on Monday, for about seven minutes at about the time you would normally step outside for your coffee break, the world as we know it will end.
Bright mid-morning will turn to deep twilight.
Birds will return to their roosts. Roosters will crow day’s end. Eagles will raise hawks as their own young. Squirrels will drop their nuts. Bears will go all Goldilocks with the contents of indoor refrigerators.
And, yea, the sun will disappear. In its place, a giant eye with a thin, flaring iris and depthless black pupil will stare down. Those who dare to stare back risk blindness.
And, more prosaically, backyard astronomers throughout the region will snap solar filters over their telescope lenses and peer into the sky.
Then the moon will move on, the sun will reappear from behind it, and things will return to normal. Total solar eclipses like what will occur tomorrow happen when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth, casting a narrow shadow that rushes across the planet’s surface.
Monday’s total eclipse travels across the northern U.S. In Victoria, only about 89 per cent of the sun will be blocked. Even that, however, will cause the temperature to drop, the wind to change, and animals to act strangely, as if the world had gone haywire.
It’s rare and it’s cool. Whatever you do, however, don’t look at or near the sun without a certified sun filter during the eclipse.
Portents regarding severe and permanent eye damage are very real. If you haven’t already acquired a sun filter, it might be too late to get one for Monday’s eclipse.
But there is another, filter-less and low-tech way to watch the eclipse without looking anywhere near the sun: Use a pinhole camera.
1. Poke a nail hole through a large sheet of stiff paper, Bristol board or cardboard.
2. Hold the sheet over a sidewalk and above your head, pointing the sheet’s upper surface toward the sun.
3. Watch the ground where the spot of light beaming through the cardboard shines.
4. The eclipse will unfold at your feet.
Pinhole cameras flip the image, however, so the eclipse in the sky that you watch on the ground will also be upside down.
Another instance of a world all topsy-turvey.