You may recall that last fall, we traveled to Corona, NM, watched the sun’s corona emerge from the edges of an annular eclipse and drank a Corona beer to celebrate. And on the way back, our good friends who rode with us to experience the astronomical phenomena started coming down with a case of the Coronavirus. (Four Coronas.) Luckily, both my wife and I did not catch the virus, even though were cooped up in the same car with our friends for several hours.
That eclipse was an annular “ring of fire” eclipse, where the sun’s outer edges peaked out around the sides of the moon’s disk. It was an impressive experience and it got really cold when it peaked, but it didn’t get all that dark.
Fast forward to earlier this week, when we traveled to Austin to witness a total eclipse with our daughter and grandchildren.
Despite intermittent cloud cover, we were able to experience totality. It got so dark that street lights turned on, birds and insects stopped chirping and churring and it got quite a bit colder.
However, it was far from completely quiet. We went to our granddaughter’s elementary school to witness the event on the playground with about 450 kindergarten through fifth grade students and many of their parents.
It was a cacophony of kids laughing, shrieking and generally talking as loud as they could outdoors. When the approaching eclipse would peek out momentarily from behind a cloud, the kids would cheer “YAY” at the top of their lungs. When the sun slid back behind a cloud, waves of “BOO” would erupt from the crowd. The video below gives you a sample of what it was like.
And below is a picture when totality occurred at 1:34 p.m. At that time, the sun was pretty much obscured by the clouds, but you can see how dark it was. (My iPhone did its best to make the picture bright, so this photo is artificially enhanced.)
My wife, daughter and I wore the t-shirts we had created for the eclipse in Corona last fall, and I chose to wear some really goofy-looking welding glasses — all in hopes of providing maximum embarrassment to our granddaughter. (I actually think she found it funny.)
Our grandson Hayes, who was at a different school that day, got to see the totality when the clouds parted at just the right moment. His viewing outfit, as shown below, was even more unusual than mine.
It was a great experience and I’m glad we had the opportunity to see the eclipse. The next one will be in 2026, but you’ll have to travel to Greenland, Iceland or Spain to catch it. I think I’ll just stay home, wear my t-shirt, drink a Corona and hope no one nearby has the Coronavirus.
aero-cordero.com 