The upcoming total eclipse is pretty exciting. If the weather cooperates, part of northern Maine will be in the path of totality. Rather than duplicating info about how and when and where to watch, this article delves into some history and odd facts about these unique astronomical events.
“A total eclipse is a dance with three partners: the moon, the sun and Earth. It can only happen when there is an exquisite alignment of the moon and the sun in our sky,” according to Richard Vondrak, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
To see a total eclipse, you must be on the sunny side of the planet, the moon has to be at its closest distance to Earth and you have to be centered in the path of the moon’s shadow in order to fully see the sun’s corona. If you are in the path of totality, you’ve hit the jackpot because the next time a total solar eclipse will occur in that same spot is about 375 years away. During the total eclipse in Northern Maine, the moon’s shadow will travel about 148 miles along the centerline at a speed of 2,866 miles per hour.
An annular solar eclipse, according to NASA, occurs when the Moon is at its furthest distance away from the Earth. This means that the Moon’s shadow is visually much smaller than the Sun and is thus unable to cover it totally. With a partial eclipse, only a portion of the sun is covered by the moon’s shadow, so the sun appears as a crescent shape.
Solar eclipses have been occurring long before humans were around to observe them. The word eclipse comes from ekleipsis, the ancient Greek word for being abandoned. Early humans, lacking scientific knowledge, viewed the rare and forbidding darkening of the skies as bad omens associated with death and destruction. Animals also react to the strangeness of eclipses.
In China, solar eclipses were associated with the health and success of the emperor. Failing to predict an eclipse meant putting the ruler in danger. A Chinese legend tells of two astrologers who were executed after failing to predict a solar eclipse on October 22, 2134 BCE (Before the Common Era), making it the oldest solar eclipse ever recorded in human history.
Surviving clay tablets from Babylonian times recorded an eclipse on May 3, 1375 BCE. These ancient people also knew how to predict them. Believing they were especially bad news for rulers and kings, when an eclipse was approaching, a “fake” ruler was put in place to draw the bad omens away from the legitimate ruler. Even today, some cultures associate them with death and destruction.
A Greek historian Herodotus recorded a solar eclipse in 585 BCE which stopped a battle between two warring armies. When the skies darkened, they believed it was a sign to stop fighting and make peace.
In reality, eclipses are harmless. An eclipse that happened over a century ago even helped prove Einstein’s theory of relativity, though I cannot even begin to explain the science behind that.
It can be hard not to hyperventilate when contemplating the vastness of astronomical time. Scientists have calculated that the Earth will eventually reach a point in its history, some 500 to 600 million years in the future, when total solar eclipses will cease to exist. The reason? The moon is slowly moving away from Earth by about an inch and a half (4 centimeters) per year and the sun is also slowly expanding. The moon’s shadow will eventually be too small to cover the sun and these stunning celestial events will disappear.