The stars will come out over South America on Monday. The sky will turn black early afternoon. the temperature will drop; there will be dusk 360 degrees all-around, but the real star of the show will be our own sun, its corona to be exact, the solar wind visible on a black sky overhead. Mercury, Venus shining brightly. Jupiter. The universe displayed.
The shadow of the moon will darken the sun across South America from Ecuador to the eastern tip of Brazil, down to the last corner of Tierra del Fuego, causing the solar eclipse of 2020. But that is the least exciting part of the story.
It will be darkest on a very narrow path that will begin over the spectacular scenery of lakes and snow-capped volcanoes of Chile’s Lake District and quickly stretch over northern Patagonia in Argentina. That is the path of totality — that is where the universe will visit a lavish display of its grandeur in a manner few humans are ever privileged to see.
Darkest is a poor description. It will be nighttime in the middle of the day, and before it happens, it will literally be the greatest show on Earth. The eclipse will not reach India this December and with COVID-19 in the air, it is unlikely many will have an opportunity to travel to the path of totality. This is when the human ability to travel back in time through memories will help.
I have been chasing total eclipses since I trekked to an open field outside Portage La Prairie, near Winnipeg, Manitoba for the 1979 solar eclipse that changed my life. The show was utterly alien. Despite the train traveling in the distance and the spooked animals nearby and my legs knee-deep in the snow, the power of the solar wind was spread before my eyes. It was an awesome wonder.
It was humbling. It was an indescribable greatness that stopped the pedestrian cycle of day-and-night-and day, and put night in smack in mid-morning, in front of everything. The effect was a life experience that is a gift to the soul; people tend to dance like whirling dervishes in the middle of totality.
I have chased eclipses everywhere, from Papua New Guinea to West Africa, to Mongolia, to Angola, to Guadalajara, Mexico, and the Chilean-Bolivian border. This pandemic-time, however, it is those combined memories that will help us experience the December 2020 eclipse from the safety of our minds.
You can actually see the wind, in the moment of totality. The solar wind is brushed across the night sky, surprisingly a silky whitish-yellow feathery strand. And you see our sun, a black disk in the center of it all. It is a mind-blowing fantasy, a glimpse into what the universe is doing beyond what your mind imagined just seconds before.
That is the climax of an event that begins hours early with the moment of the first contact, when the shadow of the moon first begins to take a bite out of the sun. Nothing much happens other than what you see with special equipment then, taking care not to stare directly into the sun lest it burn through your retina and blind you. The wait is generally a couple of hours.
As anticipation builds, the day takes a reddish-brownish tinge that will soon leave no doubt that it will be a day like no other. The building excitement creates a mood that stops every thought of normal life. Something important is in the air.
As totality approaches, one can literally see the shadow of the moon rushing to eat up the day overhead, about 110 kilometers wide. Seeing it gives you a personal perspective of our sun, our planet, our moon, the ground beneath your feet, and yourself.
In that moment, it is possible to feel the vastness of our planet itself. Looking up moments later it will be possible to sense Earth’s smallness compared to our sun, the solar system and the stars above.
At about 3,000 to 4,500 kilometers per hour (the speed varies depending on the observer’s position vs. the Equator), the shadow of the moon comes at you fast, but as it does a number of things are taking place at the same time.
If you are near water or snow, the weakened sunlight reflects in the water or ice particles suspended in the air causing a stardust-like sparkling effect, each spark reflecting our sun, partially covered by the moon.
As light propagates through the atmosphere, sometimes one can see bands of light coming in ripples that bunch together rather quickly. In some eclipses, those bands are of different colors, other times they happen so fast and the effect is so breathtaking that one does not notice color.
That is because there is also a magnificent show going on overhead. As the moon’s shadow is about to cover the sun in its entirety, it is finally possible to look at our star without protective gear. And what a show it is — it is possible to see that the surface of the moon it not smooth, the sun shines through the moon’s mountains and for just an instant there remains just one bright ray of sun through the moon’s tallest peaks and the light around our natural satellite forms a ring, which produces a bright, giant, white-gold celestial diamond ring drawn for you, seconds before the greatest gift befalls your eyes — totality.
Even if you have seen it before, totality is a stunning moment. You are suddenly cold. Very cold, as if someone had just ripped the blanket of warmth and left you in the chill. Mercury is very bright, and you can see its distance from Venus and Jupiter. We are the third rock from the sun. And you can see stars you never saw before.
Like the master brushstroke of god, the solar wind is just like the image of wind you may picture in your mind, except you can see this one fade in the darkness of space, and at some point, you realise it is also reaching you — in the penumbral light all around the shadow of totality on Earth. It is an utterly entrancing moment.
In the geometry of an eclipse, the shadow of the moon forms a dark cone that blocks all sunlight, that is where the eclipse is total, the umbra in eclipse shadow nomenclature. Because the sun is so much larger than the moon and so the light does not come from a single point, bleeding light into the moon’s shadow from the sides, there is also a larger, imperfect shadow, the penumbra, which covers an area where the eclipse is only partial. That is a very large area, as we will see below.
The difference of observing an eclipse at 100% totality vs. 99% totality is such that if unaware of the eclipse, one could miss it altogether. That is a testament to the overwhelming power of the sun over the Earth and the entire solar system. One per cent provides enough light for day to remain day.
That all the energy that powers just about everything on Earth, including all life, and that it is just there, floating in space, arguably fragile and strong at once, a light in the immensely dark space is a moment that tends to reset the lives and minds of those present under the shadow of totality.
Birds fly disoriented. Other animals yelp and bray and squawk. Humans do too. Many let out primal screams, and dance, and stand in adoration. Totality only lasts from a few seconds to as long as five minutes, depending on the eclipse and the location.
Then light comes again from the midst of the deepest darkness. The diamond ring reappears, a fleeting moment. Then daylight comes, and it is a day like any other, but the humans left behind are often changed by the experience.
This Monday the path of totality will start over the South Atlantic Ocean at 9:33AM EST (1433 GMT), about 3,900 kilometers southeast of the Hawaiian Islands.
Eighty-seven minutes later, darkness will reach the Pacific coast of Chile, at 13:00 Chilean time (1600 GMT). In just about 25 minutes it will sweep southeast through Chilean and Argentinian Patagonia.
Along Argentina’s Sierra Colorada, just south of the city of Neuquénat the confluence of the Limay and Neuquén rivers in the ecoregion of Alto Valle del Río Negro the December 2020 eclipse will have its longest moment under totality, lasting some 130 seconds.
The shadow will then quickly sweep over the South Atlantic for some 7,000km before the eclipse ends off the coast of Namibia at 1754 GMT. India will be already shrouding in darkness.
The partial eclipse will be seen in the entire southern cone of South America on a line south from the city of Guayaquil in Ecuador to Porto Alegre Brazil, with greater coverage of the sun by the moon the further down the continent.
The city of São Paulo will only see about 50 per cent of the sun covered at about 12:45 local time, while Santiago in Chile will have the sun almost nearly covered at 13:01 local time and Buenos Aires in Argentina at 13:35.
At around 13:01, the cities of Temuco and Villarrica, in Chile will be under totality as will the regions of Araucanía, Los Ríos, and Biobío, as well as Salina del Eje and north Patagonia in Argentina. It will be dark in parts of the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as in Antarctica.
As it happens either 2 weeks before or two weeks after a solar eclipse, a lunar eclipse took place on November 30. It was seen in North and South America, Australia, and parts of Asia but not in India because, for most states, the moon was under the horizon.
The next total eclipse of the sun will be over Antarctica, December 2021.
