All three times were the charm - watching total solar eclipse
1995, October 24th was the first time I watched a total solar eclipse. I was in 11th grade and didn’t manage to get any company on my trip to South 24-pargana of West Bengal to view the eclipse. So, I didn’t look around for any help. Based on the information I gathered from the newspapers I charted down the time (around 8:50 in the morning) and the exact location of the totality (which was probably a 50 km wide band). The night before was Diwali/Kali Puja in India, a new moon day. Solar eclipses always happen on a new moon day. I crossed the Ganga river on a ferry and went to Khardah to my Pishi’s (aunt) house to stay the night. This considerably reduced my commute time the next morning. For whatever reason my cousin-brother wasn’t convinced as well to join me in the eclipse trip. But I was totally determined to make it to the totality no matter what. Scientific information in those days used to come either through popular science articles in the newspapers or through one or two TV shows. I combed every possible source that I could have about the eclipse, which made me convinced that this was supposed to be a once in a lifetime experience that I couldn’t afford to miss at any cost.
The next day, at 5 in the morning I left my Pisihi’s house and took two different trains through Shealdah towards my destination. Many of the people, I heard, were interested in going to a popular town in South Bengal on the bank of the Ganga River called Diamond Harbor. I was not sure of the reason, but the local Bengali newspapers might have made it a bit sensational by matching the “diamond ring” of the solar eclipse with Diamond Harbor. Probably some people found it poetic that way. I, however, figured that town to be a bit further away from the center of the totality. One would be able to see the solar plasma (known as the Corona) as long as they are inside the band of totality, however, the more you are towards the center more time you have to enjoy this astounding sight. The maximum duration of the totality that year in West Bengal was around 1 minute and 20 seconds, which was a short time anyway. I was not ready to lose any of that getting carried away by a lyrical inspiration. Hence, when I took a local train on the South Shealdah line towards Lakshmikantapur I had a target location in my mind. After traveling for about 50 km (an hour or so) I got down to a rural station called Jaynagar-Majilpur along with a few more eclipse enthusiasts. I got acquainted with a couple of them during the train ride and became co-travelers to our destination.
Jaynagar was at the dead center of the totality. Besides, I got to know from some of my co-travelers that close to Jaynagar there is an area called Nimpith where a science club had organized an eclipse viewing event. Though Jaynagar was a small town, however, the name earned quite a bit of fame across Bengal for a very popular seasonal sweet delicacy, called Jaynagarer Moya that the local sweetsellers have pioneered. Beside that I didn’t know much about that town. The only local transport that was available in that area during that time was van-rickshaw. It’s a wobbly tri-cycle carrier mainly used for carrying local merchandise and whatnots. However, in that part of Bengal, those tri-cycle van-rikshaws were used as local shuttles as well. We kind of rolled onto those rikshaws towards our short journey to Nimpith.
The partial eclipse had started by the time I was on the train. Even back in 1995, I managed to get an eclipse-viewing glass by some means. I noticed people used double x-ray films to watch the eclipse as well. I am sure that was not the safest way to witness the eclipse but when means were scarce then even ghostly skeletal images came handy. On our way to Nimpith, I kept track of the progression of the partial eclipse. Finally, we arrived at a field beside Nimpith Ramakrishna Ashram where a couple of hundreds of people congregated. Organizers of a local science club put together a dais from where announcements of different scientific information and trivia about the solar eclipse were going on over a microphone. On that late autumn morning people seemed to be in a festive mood with high anticipation.
Getting a chance to see the solar corona during the totality depends on several factors, one major of them is the cloud cover. If there is even a 20% cloud cover before the sun the corona can become significantly obscured. Late Autumn in Bengal is known for its good weather. We were fortunate not to have any cloud cover that morning. Eventually, the totality neared. The crescent shape of the sun became smaller and sharper. The light all around got dimmed. Birds were confused and probably were flying back to their nests. There was an extra chill in the air.
The last few moments before the totality the crescent broke into a number of beads at the edge of the moon’s shadow (known as the Baily’s beads). These beads disappeared fast until a single bright spot remained, when I suddenly heard a huge uproar around me. Nervously I took off my glass and saw a bright spec of light at the corner of the moon’s shadow disappearing and getting replaced by a sight that I will not forget for the rest of my life. A black disk in the distant sky with a silvery-golden aura all around; two huge purplish violet flares spread out from that disk to two opposite sides. White strings of flares were spreading around the black silhouette in addition to those two huge colored flares. Every single person on the ground started jumping and shouting from the top of their lungs out of excitement. Sometimes there comes such moments of excitation where language fails. What we were witnessing surely failed our language. The excitement was profound, whether it was kids or adults all were jumping with joy. The dark sky had a few stars and planets in the background. However, we could not take our eyes off the magnificent solar corona for those precious 80 seconds. The totality ended with another diamond ring, the first bead that reappeared from the other side of the sun along with the golden ring. Light came back fast, but we took a while to come back to reality. Everyone seemed visibly shaken from the experience they just had. Experiencing such a celestial event blew me away and I promised myself I wouldn’t miss another solar eclipse in my life.
Picture legend: I didn't have a camera back in 1995, all I have is my memory. This is the best replication of my memory that I found on the Internet, though the color I saw is missing. I got to know that capturing the color of the corona is truly difficult and requires further sophisticated equipment.
However, the next opportunity I got was after 22 long years. There were many solar eclipses in the meantime all around the globe, but most of them happened on the water or far away for me to travel or had so much cloud coverage that it was not worth the effort. On August 21, 2017, I got another chance to watch the total solar eclipse while I was in the United States. This time I convinced my wife and son to join me. I kind of convinced a lot of friends to watch the eclipse as well and many of them took their own pilgrimage towards the totality.
The night before we arrived at Gatlinburg, Tennessee which was just outside the totality. The morning of August 21 we started driving to Sweetwater, Tennessee. However, the sky was partially cloudy. I was feeling nervous as I knew a layer of cloud could totally spoil the show. We finally stopped at a field beside a rural elementary school and decided that we’d try our luck from there. Once again, the old familiar experience came back. The surroundings started to dim down. Surprisingly about 15 minutes before the total eclipse all the clouds disappeared like magic! Much later I came to know that the disappearance of the cloud is a scientific phenomenon to happen during the eclipse. The sun was in the mid-sky, as it was around 1:30 pm. We were glued to our eclipse glasses few last moments and eventually, when the last bead started to disappear, we excitedly took our glasses down and watched the magic again. However, this time the solar corona had a different appearance. It was not colored, but silvery white. The flares of the corona were not that long as I witnessed 22 years ago. However, the flares looked like fine silvery silky threads that emerged from the sun projecting outwards and sometimes folded and twisted onto each other. The threads seemed to have some kind of pulse in them. It was another kind of beauty lasting for more than two and half minutes. I however conceded to Dipa that it didn’t appear as mesmerizing as my first time back in India. Maybe the first time is always the most special or the shock I had witnessing the totality for the first time has mellowed down a little. However, it was totally worth taking that trip and witnessing that magical celestial event in the background of a speckless sky a second time. I came to know that some other parts of the United States were not as lucky due to cloud cover and though they witnessed totality it was not so clear in many other places.
Last year my nerdy social media channels kept me reminding that another total eclipse is going to happen this April in the continental United States and very much within drivable distance. I kept a tab in my calendar and kept reminding myself. A couple of months back I started a whisper campaign in my family and among some of my office colleagues (who are forced to interact with me daily) for making a trip to watch the eclipse. Every time, it is a learning curve for the people I interact with that even if you are a mile away from the totality you don’t get to see the actual ethereal beauty of the total solar eclipse. You need to be inside that band of totality to see the corona even for a second. Two of my colleagues became solar-eclipse believer, my son Ujan half-agreed and Dipa took a raincheck. So, we started our drive on April 7th towards Columbus, Ohio.
April is generally the wettest month in the central and eastern United States. So, I was hopelessly tracking the weather forecast a month ahead, fully knowing that AccuWeather forecast has not much to rely upon. The April weather could be very unreliable and cloud cover is highly difficult to predict especially so many days ahead. In the US, the totality began in Texas and ended in Maine, roughly a 2000-mile-long stretch of land. About 30 million Americans live within the path of totality and it was within drivable distance for about 200-million folks. I got to know from different outlets that people were mainly focusing on Texas and Arkansas as those areas anticipated the lowest cloud covers. Hotels and AirBnBs were either all sold out or were available at ridiculously high prices. The closest drivable distance for me was Ohio (about 6-hour drive). So, I targeted Ohio to be my first option, however, in my mind, I was flexible between Indiana and New England. I was ready to drive to the location that would have the least cloud coverage. However, even a week before the best forecast I got in the entire eclipse path was a partial cloud coverage. We reserved two hotel rooms in Columbus, Ohio for April 7th a week before, mentally preparing ourselves to drive a few hours if required the day of the eclipse. As the time of the totality was a little after 3 pm we had the whole day in our hand, to drive as per the latest and best cloud forecast. A field, a parking lot, or a patch of land on the roadside was all we needed to stop by. Many cities organize music festivals, with food, beverages, and even firecrackers (!) as part of the eclipse-watch party. The American consumerism tries to milk as much as possible out of every opportunity it gets. However, planning to attend any such event could be a deterrent in watching the totality as the viewers would lose their flexibility to move as per any last change in the weather.
Columbus, Ohio was also just outside the totality but within moderate drivable distance from Indianapolis to Lake Eerie. On the day of the Eclipse, I let one of my colleagues drive so that I would have the latest cloud coverage update in my hand and navigate our route accordingly. The cloud cover and path of the totality appeared to be coinciding, the nature seemed to have a sense of eclipse-related dark humor. We were heading towards Indiana and figured out that the Ohio-Indiana border on the path of the totality seemed to be our best bet, however, we finalized our destination probably an hour before the totality. On our way, the partial eclipse had already begun.
We stopped at an empty parking lot next to a Church close to Hagerstown, Indiana, and set up our gadgets, and different fun experiments we planned for on a grassy field beside that church. The twilight arrived soon; the temperature came down fast. There were still some high-clouds in the sky, which I thought won’t go away before the totality. However, I got to know from the weather experts that those high-clouds would not significantly impede eclipse viewing. My nervousness was still there as I knew how critical a cover of cloud may become. And eventually came the showtime, the totality. This time through that 10% cloud cover I did not witness Bailey’s beads however the diamond ring was clear, and the corona was visible. I think we got probably 80% of clarity for the corona. This time the flares were long, mostly white, though the silky strings were not visible but there were a couple of bright reddish-golden spots were visible at different points on the edge of the dark lunar disk. Later I learned that these bright spots are called prominence, which are huge, tangled bursts of magnetic plasma generated on the surface of the sun and extending into space. This time the totality was long, in-fact, the longest I have witnessed, a full 4 minutes at our location. Our phones and SLR camera helped us capture some images, however, none of the equipment were professional grades, and my knowledge in photography lacks the depth to capture the best possible images of a total solar eclipse, however, I felt the DSLR camera did a pretty good job this time. Moreover, we were lucky again to enjoy most of it in spite of the light cloud cover where we were and significantly high-cloud in most of the places on the path of the totality. I could convince my cousin-brother Arka to watch the total solar eclipse for the first time. His family witnessed it from the border of New York State and Vermont and he reported to have watched a ruby red coloration at some point of the totality.
Picture legend: One of the several images I captured using our Nikon 7500 DSLR. No post-editing done or filter used, except zoom and crop.
What next? I guess I take a break for the next two decades. The next one happening in the contiguous United States is in August 2045, 21 years from now. I may or may not make it until then. If I am around, I surely will attempt another trip. Not that I will get to see something obviously different, however, the experience of watching the totality is so unnatural that somehow, I feel a wonder inside me, a sensation of awe. It is hard to describe how unnatural the sight is unless someone has witnessed the full beauty of the solar corona first-hand. The relative diameter and distance of the sun and the moon make this awe-inspiring cosmic event visible to us by a sheer stroke of luck. I am surely lucky that I managed to witness it multiple times.
Picture legend: The dark sky during the totality. Jupiter on the upper left corner and Venus at the lower right of the sun were clearly visible. Image captured in an iPhone by Ellie Thamert.
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