A total solar eclipse is happening today. It’s the first that mainland Europe has seen in nearly 30 years. For a couple of minutes, the moon will line up perfectly with the sun and cast a shadow that plunges part of our planet into total darkness.
I’ve seen only a partial solar eclipse — years ago in London — but even that was an eerie experience: The day suddenly drained away, like an apocalyptic dimming of the light. The world in black and white.
My colleague Katrina Miller has experienced totality before, as a science writer and as a human being. Today she writes about what she describes as not just a spiritual and communal event — but also a “cosmic coincidence.”
Millions of eager spectators flocked to the path of the total solar eclipse that swept across North America in 2024. I was one of them.
It was my first time experiencing totality — those fleeting moments after the moon slides between us and the sun, casting a shadow hundreds of thousands of miles long onto Earth that plunges part of our world into ephemeral darkness.
Totality is as eerie as it is breathtaking. As the moon swallows the sun, the air on Earth cools. Shadows sharpen and the light fades, as if someone turned down the brightness at the wrong part of day. Excitement dissolves into tension as the sun gives one final, brilliant glint. Then the moon clicks into place, and the world is thrown into twilight.
Nature responds to this shift: Birds stop singing, crickets start chirping and flowers close their blooms. Humans react, too. We cheer, gasp and roar below a blotted-out sun, the only time we can stare directly at the star that gives us life.
A cosmic coincidence
Totality is a cosmic coincidence. Our moon is about 400 times smaller than the sun, but it is also 400 times closer to Earth. This makes the two appear to be the same size from our point of view. The sun, moon and Earth are locked in a gravitational dance around one another, and when these three align, we bear witness to a solar eclipse.
Scientists know enough about the movement of bodies in the solar system to predict down to the second when an eclipse will occur. (NASA maintains a list of solar eclipse dates and locations through the end of the century. Read it here.) Today, the event will kick off in northern Russia, and then loop around to Greenland, through Iceland and across the Atlantic Ocean. It will pass over Spain and a tiny corner of Portugal before ending in the Mediterranean Sea.
Those in regions adjacent to the path will see a partial solar eclipse, during which the moon will obscure only a portion of the sun’s surface. But people along the eclipse path itself — a swath of land less than 322 kilometers wide, delineated by the shadow of the moon — will, weather permitting, get about two minutes of totality.
Humans, on a rock, in space
Before the main event in 2024, I spent months learning about the history and science of solar eclipses, how to stay safe viewing one and the effects they have on living things. But nothing could have prepared me for what many eclipse chasers describe as a spiritual experience.
Facts and figures don’t quell the unease of watching the light die, nor do they dampen the relief felt when it reappears on the other side. Skywatchers along the eclipse path breathe a collective sigh as they emerge from the moon’s shadow, almost like a wave that ripples through the crowd at a sporting event, but on a global scale.
There’s a certain kinship fostered under a total solar eclipse. People spend months, even years, preparing for an event that lasts but a few moments. In the hours leading up to totality, we congregate in stadiums, on the sides of highways, atop pyramids and on boats in the sea. We don our eclipse glasses, and, together, we turn our gaze to the sky.
Totality is a heady reminder that we are on a rock twirling around a star in space, part of a system of planets within a galaxy that exists inside of an infinite universe. But more than that, it offers a primal sense of what it means to be human, through shared despair and delight under a celestial rebirth. We are all so consumed by our problems on the ground. Sometimes, we need a reason to look up.
More coverage:
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What was deemed a credible threat from Iran against Air Force One, however, did not stop it from being sent into the skies anyway with a planeful of senior officials, government employees, reporters and military personnel serving as decoys, some unwittingly.
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AROUND THE WORLD
Kenya kicks up its heels
On the last Saturday of July, a group on the outskirts of Nairobi danced and ate barbecue. They were celebrating country music during International Cowboys and Cowgirls Day, a festival held for the second year in a row.
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