It’s a total eclipse of the heart
Toronto filmmaker has spent about $100K and travelled to all seven continents to chase event
When David Makepeace experienced his first solar eclipse in 1991, he didn’t expect it would completely transform his life.
“My slate was wiped clean . . . I have not been the same since,” said Makepeace, now 54 and a filmmaker/video producer in Toronto.
It’s difficult to describe the rush he gets from seeing an eclipse, he says, but it’s an overpowering feeling of being “at one with the cosmos.”
“You see that first one and then it’s all over. As soon as the shadow of the moon rushes off you, you want that feeling back.”
Now Makepeace is addicted to chasing solar eclipses — he’s travelled to all seven continents to stand in the moon’s shadow.
In 2003, he spent a month on an icebreaker travelling to the far side of Antarctica, where he witnessed an eclipse from an ice shelf. He’s gone into the Saharan desert to see an eclipse with thousands of other people at a campsite in Libya. He’s gone to a volcanic island in Indonesia and he’s even taken a chartered flight, so he and more than 70 other eclipse chasers could sail through the moon’s shadow at more than 11,200 metres.
On Monday, Makepeace will witness his 23rd eclipse, and 16th total eclipse, in Wyoming. It’s an experience he firmly believes everybody should have at least once in their lifetime. In fact, he runs a website called EclipseGuy.com dedicated to spreading the word.
During a total eclipse, everything goes dark, you can see other planets and animals behave oddly.
“There’s just a litany of change taking place all around you when you’re standing in the shadow of the moon,” said Makepeace, who estimates he has spent about $100,000 chasing eclipses.
Seeing the corona — the aura surrounding the eclipsed sun — is especially intense. He said people are often overcome with tears during the experience.
“There’s no way to really describe it unless you see totality yourself,” he said.
On Monday, people across the United States will witness a total solar eclipse — the rare astronomical event where the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, fully covering the sun and darkening part of the Earth with its shadow. Mil- lions of people will be in the roughly 110-kilometre-wide “path of totality,” a ribbon spanning from Salem, Ore., to Charleston, S.C., according to NASA.
People in Toronto will experience a partial solar eclipse Monday when the moon will cover about 70 per cent of the sun, with maximum coverage at 2:32 p.m.
Makepeace is part of a community of eclipse chasers, who avidly seek out the shadow of the moon — although he says he’s among the most hardcore. He generally sees eclipses with a band of other avid chasers — it makes more sense to go in groups, especially when hunting down eclipses in remote places.
A total eclipse is a “spectacular” experience, said Chris Malicki, a family doctor in Mississauga who’s travelled the world to see 14 total eclipses and five annular eclipses, where the moon covers the sun’s centre.
He vividly remembers being flab- bergasted by his first total eclipse in 1979. Next week, his 5- and 7-year-old grandchildren will see an eclipse for their first time.
“I think it’s the most dramatic and beautiful thing one can see in nature,” said Malicki, whose wife is also an eclipse chaser.
“It’s like standing on another planet during the precious two minutes or so when the sun completely disappears . . . There’s beautiful angel wings around this black hole, it’s dark, then suddenly in the period of a minute or two it just becomes daylight again. It’s unreal.”
Randy Attwood, the executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, will see his10th solar eclipse on Monday. He and his wife actually chased an eclipse during their honeymoon in 1984, travelling to a small fishing village in Papua New Guinea, where there was no electricity or running water.
Attwood said that it’s difficult for people who’ve never seen a total eclipse to understand what’s so incredible about them.
“Generally, people who see their first eclipse, the first thing they say after the eclipse is ‘when’s the next one?’ ” Attwood said.
“The light levels change dramatically, you can actually see the moon’s shadow race across the sky. You actually reach a point where you are aligned with the moon and the sun and the Earth.”
For people staying in Toronto, Attwood said it’s crucial that people don’t look at the partially eclipsed sun without proper protection. He urges people to wear properly made solar viewers or eclipse glasses — sunglasses are not sufficient.
For thousands in the U.S., Monday will be their first time seeing a total solar eclipse.
Yvette Cendes, 31, has been planning to see this total eclipse since she was 13 years old. Now an astronomy PhD student at the University of Toronto, Cendes can’t wait to travel to Jackson Hole, Wy., to be in the “path of totality” for the first time.
Several people from her department are travelling for the event, she said, and she has astronomer friends flying in from Europe to see it.
“It’s going to be pretty big. I’m kind of joking it’s like a wedding: what are we going to talk about once the eclipse is done?” she said, laughing, adding that she’s a little worried about getting hooked on the expensive hobby.
On Wednesday, Makepeace will fly to Wyoming, where he and a dozen friends will pack into RVs and travel to the centreline of the eclipse path. If it looks like it might be cloudy, they’ll hop in their RVs and move — you’ve got to be mobile, or risk missing the eclipse, he said. He usually has five or six cameras rolling during every eclipse, but the experience is impossible to truly capture.