The Magic of an Eclipse

Hello Brian

Yes, I saw the eclipse but it was really great luck!!!

We decided to travel to the path of totality a day before the event. Due to the wheather forecast which was terrible we then took off to the only place where a 50 - 60 % chance of reasonable good wheather was expected. We headed towards the border of Germany / France along the Rhine river which is protected by hills on both sides, so that some breaks in the cloud cover sky were expected.

By that time the freeway was quiet and we arrived 4 hours early, but the sky was black, full of clouds. We drove further west to France but up the hills the weather got worse. Many people gathered along the roads and had build up their telescopes etc. (they didn't see anything as we found out later).

We decided to return to the Rhine valley and got there just before 11.00 o'clock when the moon was supposed to start covering the sun. We found a place surrounded by corn fields and not many people standing in the way and asking silly questions!

By that time nothing was functioning anymore: 50 to 80 kilometers traffic jams, overloaded trains (people who tried to go to a better place) etc.

We watched the eclipse through thin clouds with our eclipse-glasses and by projection.

The kids were quite enthusiastic and the clouds somehow managed to get around our place most of the time. The light was strangly pale and the shadows got sharper, the women felt cold and I looked for other natural signs showing the upcoming total eclipse. The only thing I noted was a huge black cloud piling up in the NW but not moving very fast. I mentioned to change our observing site once more. Nobody wanted to move...

Then things happened so quickly that it took me a quarter of an hour to recover from all those impressions. I took out the big binoculars (25x100) to observe the totality without filter. Some minutes before the great event we called all the children to come out of the corn fields to watch the sun go. The huge black cloud had moved very close to us.Then somebody turned the dimmer of our sun slowly and then ever faster. I haven't felt so lonely and tiny for a long time if ever. In the west (the sky thickly covered with black cumulus) a black shadow rose and grew quickly. No noise was heard but the darkness fell across the land like a blanket. And then we saw the corona and many huge beautifully red protuberances. Everyone wanted to take a look and so I looked around and tried to grasp as many impressions as possible of this absolutely fantastic natural phenomenon. My daughter Seraina was holding Astrid's hand and didn't look quite healthy anymore! It really shaked every single one of us and touched something very deep inside us. I didn't ever expect to feel that way because as an amateur you know exactly what's going to happen in terms of celestial mechanics etc. but the emotional part is hard to describe and I only know I want to see that again!!!

Two minutes is a short time and the eclipse was over and you could actually feel - not hear - a deep sigh, a relief that the sun was still there and quickly lighten the scenery. We meant to see some bats but are not quite sure.

Exactly 2 minutes later the huge black cloud covered the sun for the next hour or so!

We were absolutely lucky to have witnessed this great event and it took several minutes until life was something like back to normal.

Back home we found out about some friends that managed to get very close to our site and didn't see a thing!!! (only about 1,5 km away!!)

On the way back we got plenty of rain and storm but it didn't bother us at all.

I haven't been impressed so deeply by a natural phenomenon before and I really understand people of ancient times who were afraid etc.

Thanks for listening and best regards,

Mike

Submitted by: Brian Fraser