The last solar eclipse of the millenium
Posted 14 August 1999
This looks really weird. You can tell something is going on.
- Mitzi Adams, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
On 11 August 1999 a total eclipse of the sun started in Newfoundland, crossed the Atlantic, swept across one of the most populated parts of Europe, then through bits of central Asia and the Subcontinent before sliding off the edge of the horizon. I work about half the time in Brussels, and so I had an opportunity to view the eclipse.
Early in the morning several of my colleagues piled into three small cars and worked our way from Brussels down to France to be able to witness totality. We had some adventures getting down there, not least when a truck smashed head-on into the car in which I riding, but eventually we found ourselves on the shoulder of a country lane north of the French town of Hirson, just inside the area of totality, where the moon would completely obscure the sun.
Unfortunately, that part of France was very cloudy and overcast that day, so we were not able to see the crescent sun being finally swallowed up by the moon and the blazing corona surrounding the phenomenon. However, there are several other unusual effects accompanying totality, which we were able to experience even under an overcast sky.
Totality was to occur at about 12:25. After all our sufferings along the way, we arrived within the zone of totality with about fifteen minutes to spare. By then it seemed a bit darker than a normal day, though it was difficult to tell for sure with all that cloud cover. But as the minutes ticked past we could see it getting gradually darker, and the temperature was dropping noticeably. In fact, it was really quite chilly for noon in August, and most of us were not really dressed for it. We shivered in the murk.
By about 12:20 there was no doubt it was darker and colder than any cloudy August day should be. However, the most dramatic dimming only began within about two minutes of totality. By about 12:23 or so the light started seeping away very rapidly, like nothing I’ve ever experienced before in nature. During the approximately 48 seconds of totality, it was quite literally as dark as night under those clouds. I even have a photograph to give you and idea of what it was like (taken without a flash, unfortunately):
Well, it’s not a very good photograph. In fact, in real life you can still see sky and shadows, even at night, and so I and my colleagues spent totality “oohing” and “ahhing” and looking at the sky and each other until suddenly it started getting light again, very quickly. Within four or five minutes it seemed like any other overcast day.
Suddenly the clouds thinned a little above our heads and we saw the crescent sun, filtered through the overcast so we didn’t need protective glasses to watch it. The solar crescent was a thin sliver of gold, but there was still enough light to make it seem like any other cloudy noonday. Eventually the clouds thinned to the point we had to use the Mylar lenses to observe the eclipse, and we were a bit disappointed this couldn’t have happened ten minutes earlier. But I don’t think any of us were sorry we had come so far through so much to experience a fleeting winter night during an August noon.
I’ve never really given much thought to eclipses before (I’d witnessed two partial solar eclipses as a child), but after this experience I am a believer. Solar eclipses occur somewhere on the planet about every two years. I believe the next one will be in Mongolia or somewhere like that. Sometime in the next twenty years or so I should have a shot at experiencing totality again.