EYES SKYWARD
Logan Clyde and his mother watch the solar eclipse on Monday at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vanier Park. Demand was high, and the centre ran out of viewing glasses. See
When the moon partially blotted out the sun, the temperature dipped, the sky dimmed and the light took on an odd silvery quality as thousands looked skyward for a glimpse of the unusual celestial event.
Monday’s solar eclipse drew large crowds to a viewing party outside Vancouver’s H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, one of dozens across Canada.
“I got goosebumps, literally chills down my spine,” said Maggie Silva of the moment the moon covered 86 per cent of the sun at 10:21 a.m. “What an amazing event, to see our sun and moon and planet align like that. It reminds you how we’re just a speck in this big, boundless beyond.”
Silva’s sentiments were a common refrain among the many sunwatchers who came to watch the eclipse, which started in Vancouver at 9:10 a.m. and ended more than two hours later at 11:37 a.m.
Many braved the crowds and the snarled roads near the space centre because they didn’t want to miss the event. Many more left in awe and a new appreciation of the cosmos.
The space centre quickly ran out of solar-eclipse viewing glasses, and encouraged people to share. Most people watching the eclipse appeared to heed repeated warnings by officials to wear eye protection when looking at the sun which, even in its diminished state, could still damage a viewer’s retina.
Some people came prepared, with eclipse-viewing glasses, tripod-mounted cameras, and lounge chairs. Others stood on the pavement and used cereal boxes as makeshift pinhole projectors. One man looked up into the sky wearing a motorcycle helmet with the visor down.
Viewing parties were also held on top of Mount Tolmie in Victoria, and at Science World, the University of B.C. and UBC Robson Square in Vancouver.
Caleb Trotter and Ashley Lopez were visiting Vancouver from Sacramento, Calif., and joined the throngs at a grassy knoll near the space centre.
Trotter tracked the eclipse’s progress with what could be the most Canadian of all pinhole cameras — using the lid and an empty Tim Hortons coffee cup. “If it wasn’t for (Lopez) needing coffee, we would have been only 10 per cent prepared,” joked Trotter.
Lopez said one of the best aspects about the eclipse was people didn’t need high-tech gear to enjoy the spectacle. When the space centre ran out of glasses, she said, they started handing out white sheets of paper that could be used as a pinhole projector.
“People have been really nice, sharing their glasses and their pinholes and sharing techniques,” said Tej Pattni, who was watching a projected image of the eclipse on paper with daughter Ella Barnbrook.
What made the eclipse even more impressive, she said, was that it’s just the universe doing its thing. “Although it’s incredible, it’s also completely predictable and routine. It’s just normal for the heavens, it’s satellites in orbit.”
When she was living in Tanzania in the 1970s, Pattni remembers witnessing a total solar eclipse. “The animals started howling and it went totally dark,” she said. “It was really spooky.”
That would have been the scenario this year for U.S. communities stretching from Oregon to South Carolina that fell within the eclipse’s “path of totality,” a 110-kilometre-wide and 4,800-km-long swath directly in the shadow of the moon.
In Canada, the West Coast was the best spot to watch the eclipse. About 90 per cent of the sun was blocked in Victoria. Toronto had about 70 to 75 per cent totality, while Halifax had about 60 per cent.
Space centre astronomer Derek Kief spent most of the time during the eclipse answering questions from an enraptured audience outside the observatory, where a large projection scope projected an image of the eclipse onto a white screen.
Solar eclipses aren’t rare, said Kief. What made Monday’s eclipse a much-hyped event was the fact that it spanned the continental U.S., the first total solar eclipse to do so in close to a century.
Central Canadians will have their chance at a total solar eclipse in 2024, when one will be visible over Eastern Canada. Vancouver will witness another partial solar eclipse at that time.
Kief was happy at the largerthan-anticipated crowds at the space centre. It’s not often that people turn their gaze up into the heavens anymore, he said.
“A lot of people are focused down on their devices and down on earth, but there’s a lot of really cool stuff happening in space, and trying to get people to look up and revel in the wonder that exists in space — that’s my job as an astronomer and a person of this Earth.”