ON 8 APRIL, a total solar eclipse will be visible from various parts of North America. The path in which this will occur runs from Mexico, diagonally across the US and into the Atlantic region of Canada. Eclipses like this, where the moon moves directly between the sun and Earth and blocks out light, happen almost every 20 years. But our planet is a big place, and these events can’t be seen everywhere. Only about once every 400 years is one visible from any given spot on Earth. Which is to say, those of us in or near the path of the eclipse are quite excited.
I have never seen a total eclipse, and that is unlikely to change this time, unfortunately. That is despite living in a place close enough to the strip that will be cast into total shadow that you might think we are lucky, as from here at least 90 per cent coverage of the sun by the moon will occur.
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But unluckily for my community, there is a reason the region we are in is called New England, and it isn’t just because the first settler-colonisers who came here were deeply uncreative in their naming scheme.
New England is also prone to a spot of English weather. On balance, I expect clouds on 8 April, not just where I live, but also along the path of total darkness, or totality, that is within driving distance, which is why I am not shelling out for the exorbitant hotel prices I have been seeing.
It feels strange to accept that I am likely to miss the astronomical experience of a lifetime – though it is possible I will throw caution to the wind and hustle up to Vermont at the last minute with visions of totality filling my head.
One would think that as a practitioner of astronomy – I am a professional particle astrophysicist – that I would be first in line. I have two degrees in astronomy and everything!
But a quirk of a modern astronomy education is that you can have two or even three degrees in astronomy and astrophysics and know little to nothing about actually looking up at the sky with any kind of competence. Neither of my undergraduate lab projects required me to know anything about doing this, or knowing what equipment I might need to take a decent photograph of the stars.
I have even been on what is called an observing run at the twin Magellan telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama desert, Chile. I tagged along with a couple of observational astronomers on a 10-day trip in 2011.
My main takeaway was that a sky with no light pollution is absolutely stunning and, also, observational astronomy is too hard for me. Not least because you could spend 24 hours travelling and, on reaching your destination, have your allotted observing time completely ruined by clouds.
After that trip, I never saw myself going near a telescope, even though, as I like to joke with people, two of my best friends are telescope builders. I am all set with equations, I told myself and anyone who asked about it.
Turns out that I was full of it, and not just because I am playing a leadership role in the science definition of a proposed X-ray space telescope called STROBE-X (which stands for “Spectroscopic Time-Resolving Observatory for Broadband Energy X-rays”) and also helped make the case for how the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will improve our efforts to understand the fundamental nature of dark matter.
Last year, I quietly began researching amateur astronomy, joined the related helpful online community called Cloudy Nights and invested in a telescope, mount and a specialty astrophotography camera.
In the past, I didn’t feel strongly about clouds over my house. But now I feel extremely disappointed every time they ruin my night, which is a lot since, remember, I live in New England. But that only makes the nights and days when there are clear skies more magical. A clear sky is precious, especially as our weather systems respond to a warming planet and as LED lights that radiate across the visible spectrum make it increasingly difficult to see the universe beyond our atmosphere.
I have started posting the of my own making on my Instagram and making music videos out of them on TikTok. My favourite , a close-up using a specialty filter (remember never to look directly at the sun or point a camera at it without an appropriate filter).
In the video, set to Megan Thee Stallion’s music, you can see sunspots on our star. A view like this is accessible to anyone with binoculars and some solar filter paper. I might not get to see the eclipse, but I urge you to join me in looking up, not just on clear nights, but during clear days too.
For more of our coverage of the eclipse, see
Chanda’s week
What I’m reading
I’m loving James Poskett’s Horizons: The global origins of modern science.
What I’m watching
I’ve been quite enjoying the sci-fi television dramaConstellation.
What I’m working on
Reading a lot about the history of human conceptions of space and time.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an associate professor of physics and astronomy, and a core faculty member in women’s studies at the University of New Hampshire. Her most recent book is The Disordered Cosmos: A journey into dark matter, spacetime, and dreams deferred
