Well, it just happened again today – it’s October 14th, the year is 2023, and today I was eclipsed. It doesn’t happen very often these days, as I don’t go looking for it, but it still happens. Even if I don’t try to find one, one of them could still find me wherever I am at the time. What am I babbling about, you might well ask? An eclipse of the sun, that’s what. Allow me to tell you a bit about how a solar eclipse actually works. I’m going to cheat, and quote a couple of paragraphs from an excellent article in Wikipedia.
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby obscuring the view of the Sun from a small part of the Earth, totally or partially. Such an alignment occurs approximately every six months, during the eclipse season in its new moon phase, when the Moon’s orbital plane is closest to the plane of the earth’s orbit. In a total eclipse, the disk of the Sun is fully obscured by the Moon. In partial and annular eclipses, only part of the Sun is obscured. Unlike a lunar eclipse, which may be viewed from anywhere on the night side of Earth, a solar eclipse can only be viewed from a relatively small area of the world. As such, although total solar eclipses occur somewhere on Earth every 18 months on average, they recur at any given place only once every 360 to 410 years.
If the Moon were in a perfectly circular orbit and in the same orbital plane as Earth, there would be total solar eclipses once a month, at every new moon. Instead, because the Moon’s orbit is tilted at about 5 degrees to Earth’s orbit, its shadow usually misses Earth. Solar (and lunar) eclipses therefore happen only during eclipse seasons, resulting in at least two, and up to five, solar eclipses each year, no more than two of which can be total. Total eclipses are more rare because they require a more precise alignment between the centers of the Sun and Moon, and because the Moon’s apparent size in the sky is sometimes too small to fully cover the Sun.
When a solar eclipse occurs, the path of totality is only about 100 miles wide, and can be up to 10,000 miles long. You need to be inside that path along the earth’s surface if you want to see the sun totally eclipsed. Outside that path, you can only see part of the sun eclipsed, for what we call a partial eclipse. That narrow path of totality is what makes the likelihood of a total eclipse occurring twice in the same spot a real long shot, only once every several hundred years. Another major consideration in viewing an eclipse are viewing conditions. If you can’t see the sun, then you can’t see the eclipse, so weather plays an all-important role. If where you are is having a cloudy day, then for all intents and purposes the eclipse just won’t be happening for you.
For this story, I did a lot of research and came up with a list of all the solar eclipses here on Earth since the year I was born, and then only looked at the ones that occurred where I was living at the time. However, before I talk about those, here’s something important to consider – the chance of seeing a partial eclipse is far greater than seeing a total eclipse. Unless of course you’re an umbraphile – that’s a person who chases eclipses. Those folks will travel great distances to put themselves in the path of totality to see and photograph a total eclipse. It is even possible to buy a seat on a chartered jet plane that flies along the path of totality so that more time can be spent viewing the total eclipse. The path of totality can occur anywhere on the earth’s surface – out over the ocean, over polar regions, over remote unpopulated areas, and yes, sometimes over populated areas. It’s the eclipses that occur over more accessible areas that will see plenty of people traveling there for a good view.
As I look back on the solar eclipses I’ve personally lived through in my 76 years, I realize that it’s been a real mixed bag of results. Some of them saw such a small percentage of the sun being covered that you wouldn’t even notice that any sort of eclipse was going on, like this first one.
April 29, 1957 – I was living in Vancouver, British Columbia. There, only 8% of the sun was covered, and you wouldn’t even notice anything.
October 2, 1959 – I was in Montréal, Québec. I remember my father being excited about this one. It was only a partial eclipse, but with 67% of the sun’s disc being covered, you could see a definite dimming of the daylight.
July 20, 1963 – I was living near Vancouver, BC. It was a partial eclipse, with 59% coverage of the disc, but I don’t remember anything about it. Perhaps it was a cloudy day.
May 9, 1967 – in Vancouver, BC for this one, a partial with 46% of the sun being eclipsed. No recollection of it, though – perhaps it was a cloudy day, common enough in that part of the world.
September 11, 1969 – working out in a remote area of what was known then as the Yukon Territory in northern Canada. A partial eclipse, with only 19% coverage. I don’t recall it at all – it may have been cloudy, but even if it had been clear, it’s not enough of the sun’s disc being covered to make much of a noticeable difference in the daylight.
March 7, 1970 – I was in Vancouver, BC. Only 9% of the sun was covered that day. I don’t remember it – again, it could have been cloudy.
February 26, 1979 – finally, after 31 years of living on planet Earth, I was in the right place at the right time. Well, sort of. I was living near Vancouver, and I traveled the 180 miles down to Olympia, Washington and spent a few days with a friend. Yes, Folks, I had become an umbraphile. We were perfectly positioned to see a total eclipse that day, but the weather was iffy. Clouds were drifting in and out – sometimes the view of the sun was good, and at others it was quite obscured. We did have enough breaks in the cloud cover to allow us to briefly glimpse the totality of the eclipse, though, so it was all worth it.
January 4, 1992 – quite a few years had passed, and I was living in Tucson, Arizona. On that day, a partial eclipse occurred, with 45% of the sun’s disc covered. I don’t remember this one at all – perhaps it was cloudy.
May 21, 1993 – once again in Tucson, a partial eclipse occurred, with only 3% covered. Nobody would have even noticed.
May 10, 1994 – I remember this one well. I was in Tucson, and it was a partial eclipse, but it was 85% coverage. My wife and I watched it from a parking lot on the north side of town, and the sky grew noticeably dimmer at the peak time. It was exciting to see.
December 14, 2001 – this was a partial eclipse, but only 13% of the sun’s disc was covered – not enough to notice in Tucson.
June 10, 2002 – another partial, but with 66% covered, there should have been a definite dimming of the daylight. I don’t remember this one, though.
May 20, 2012 – a leap of 10 years ahead. I was still living in Tucson, Arizona when this partial eclipse with 80% coverage took place. For some reason, though, I don’t recall it. By all rights, it should have been a pretty good one.
October 23, 2014 – while I was living in Tucson, this 30% partial eclipse occurred. That wouldn’t have produced much of a noticeable dimming, however – I don’t remember it at all.
August 21, 2017 – this partial eclipse went at 59% coverage, which should have produced a noticeable dimming, but once again I don’t recall it.
October 14, 2023 – this is the one that inspired me to write this piece. It occurred just yesterday. Once again, it was a partial, but it boasted a nice 77% coverage here in Tucson. The peak coverage was at 9:33 AM local time. I had a pair of those eclipse-viewing glasses that came for free in my Astronomy magazine, and they worked like a charm, allowing you to look directly at the sun with no risk of eye damage. As the peak time approached, there was a distinct decrease in the amount of daylight. It was rather eerie – the sun still cast a distinct shadow, but there was just something odd about it. It’s hard to describe. It’s as if we were living on a different planet that had a sun that was either weaker or farther away. It was fun to be a part of it.
Update – today is April 8th, 2024. It happened again today. A total eclipse of the sun occurred in the US, with the path of totality stretching from south Texas to Maine. Here in Tucson, about 75% of the sun was covered. Using the old colander trick, here is what we saw. Zoom in to get a better view.
A colander showing multiple images of the sun.
In retrospect, I’m kind of embarrassed that I have no recollection of so many of my eclipses. I could attribute that lapse to cloudy days, but certainly not all of them.