December 4, 2002 Total Solar Eclipse - The way I see it

Seconds before totality, my hands start shaking. Not from the sudden drop in temperature, but from the sheer excitement and anticipation. Then I lost control of thought and reason. Many months of careful planning – when to take pictures, when to check for solar flares with the binoculars, when to check for shadow bands etc, etc – all gone out the window. I could only stand in awe of one of natures most spectacular sky-shows. A few seconds into totality, some semblance of sanity returns and I grope for my hanging binoculars and try to look for the shutter button! What am I doing! Concentrate man. I drop the binoculars and grope for the camera. Quickly – focus. Cannot focus. Just shoot – 8 shaky snaps in as many seconds. What do I do next – try the binoculars again? What about the telescope – check the telescope. Great leaping flames off the surface of the sun. Those shades of strange-blue around the brilliant white corona, what is colour that - cobalt, turquoise? Oops, is that a tear rolling down my cheek? Oh, to heck with it – just look and enjoy …

 December 2, 2002 – 5pm. It’s as hot as hell on a private farm 21 kilometres west of Beit Bridge, right on the border with Zimbabwe. The dry river bed of the Limpopo telling us that not a drop of water has touched this earth in months. What’s the temperature? Oh, it’s only a balmy 32 degrees C at this time of the afternoon. What’s that bag hanging in the acacia tree – aha, it’s a portable shower. Great, let’s set the tents while pouring hot shower bag water over our heads every 5 minutes. Please don’t let the wind blow. When it does, it feels like a blast from a hot oven.

 Time to set the telescopes in position because it’s going to be a crystal-clear night. Oh my goodness – have a look at Orion (M42), it’s three-dimensional! Look at the Tarantula nebula – its crawling. 47 Tucanae has exploded! I can see a million stars without shimmer or scintillation. Hey guys – have a look at this – I’ve found 5 galaxies on one eyepiece in the Fornax Cluster. That’s a 32mm ultra wide angle eyepiece with a 50 minute field of view. Andromeda galaxy – try the binoculars – aaaaawesome!

 Man, I need a bigger telescope already.

 It’s 5am and it’s the big day. No problem getting out of bed this morning. This is going to be an extraordinary day. Pack the car and let’s get all this equipment to the top of that little hill over there. Hey, what are those clouds doing over there? It was clear when we went to sleep not even four hours ago. Ignore them – They’ll go away.

 About 30 excited people clamour onto this small hillock overlooking Zimbabwe to the north-west (from whence the shadow will arrive). We have a clear 360 degree view of the horizon – perfect. Telescopes, binoculars, video cameras, 35mm SLR cameras, tripods, eclipse viewers … we are ready … bring it on.

7:11 and 30 seconds and we have first contact. Roll video cameras. Someone says "Gee, they even got their predictions right". Much laughter and light banter. But those clouds clamouring in the south east over Messina had better stay away from us. Everybody is enjoying watching the celestial dinner as we witness the Moon’s voracious appetite for the Sun this morning.

 It’s getting significantly cooler. Are those goose bumps on your legs from the cold of from excitement? The light around us is becoming very strange; a steel-grey half-light cloaks the surroundings. Suddenly, a jet appears at high altitude spewing a needle-like vapour trail. It arches upwards and travels vertically towards high altitude before curling back onto its original path. It leaves an almost-perfect circle of vapour which begins drifting, as if by magnetic force, towards the eclipsing sun. Eclipse chasers in a jet.

 8:10 – its close now. Listen to the wild-life. Nervous bird calls and cicadas sharpening for an early restart.. Guinea fowl clatter noisily in the bush nearby. Everyone appears pasty-coloured in the strange low-light. Check equipment – all ready. The clouds stay away and the jet’s vapour trail perfectly encircles the celestial showpiece.

 8:15 – look towards the northwest and see if we can spot the moon’s shadow racing across the ground. Excited babbling from the audience and everyone is rooted on their spot. The high ground over Zimbabwe goes dark. A dark shadow races towards us. Someone shouts. Diamond ring! I turn to look; snap with the camera. Then it happens …

 8:17 …

 Sometimes in life, events happen to us which make an indelible burn-in to our memories that is so powerful as to be recorded in the finest detail imaginable. This is one such event. No words or pictures come close to truly capturing that impression. The fact that the diamond ring is an active evolving formation that quickly subsides into a series of little popping and boiling flickers of light as the last of the Sun’s rays press through the undulations of the Moon’s rim. And then … the corona flares outwards into an irregular shaped fan – as if to hold this priceless and rare formation in its giant clasps. Only the human eye and memory can detect and record the millions of colour variations; from the white edge of the corona down to the deep crimson horizon.

 All too soon those beads start popping and bursting again, but this time on the other side. The diamond ring re-explodes and a few seconds later a blindingly bright white light signals the end of the spectacle for the naked eye.

 A total solar eclipse taps into nearly every sensation available to the human body – sight, sound, touch, emotion … and 70 seconds is not enough. As I write this, I have goose-flesh on my alms – and it’s a balmy 32 degrees C.

 When is the next one?

Dave Gordon