Everyone should experience a total eclipse. Unfortunately, depending on which source you trust, this only happens to one person in ten thousand…or to 2% of the population. Whichever is true, this was a bucket list item for me, though not for my wife, Stella, who had seen one as a young teenager.
Path of the eclipse.
I’ve viewed a number of partial ones, a much more accessible occurrence, but being in the path of totality can be difficult…unless, as the lyrics say in the old Carly Simon hit, “You’re So Vain”, you “…fly your Learjet to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun,” though this one wasn’t total in that province, just in PEI, its neighbour.
Like many things in life, you need to experience a total eclipse to comprehend one. This is why Stella and I found ourselves crossing the Confederation Bridge to Canada’s Prince Edward Island, the western half of which was in the path of totality. As we crossed the kilometers long bridge I noticed that the sun had a distinct ring circling it, which is known as a solar Halo. This apparently is due to ice crystals high in the atmosphere and is not supposed to be related to an eclipse.
Halo around sun that seemed to foretell the eclipse several hours in advance.
The afternoon of April 8, 2024 found us at the Cape Egbert lighthouse along with 15 or 20 others who discovered this would be an ideal viewing for the eclipse, scheduled to reach totality at 4:37 pm (Atlantic Standard Time). We viewed the sun through specialized glasses that protected the eye’s retina from the painless but serious damage looking at the sun can cause. About 3:30 pm I noticed a tiny crescent shaped bite at about five o’clock on the sun’s disk. This gradually widened over the next hour as the moon slowly crept over the sun. What’s surprising is that the perceived decrease in sunlight is virtually nil until an eclipse has progressed to about 99% occlusion. Momentarily the sun looked like a diamond ring, with one glowing spot on a ring of fire. Then suddenly it was like someone turned out the lights. Briefly we could see Baily’s Beads, glowing spots that are caused by the irregularity of the edge of the moon from lunar mountains and craters. After totality the sun’s corona sported a number of red prominences, which are massive blasts of plasma that burst out from the surface of the sun from time to time.
Cape Egmont lighthouse and total eclipse. Note the lighthouse’s lantern came on.
Things fell silent…birds stopped singing, the sky darkened and we could see stars and the planet Jupiter. A sunset like glow appearing over 360 degrees of the horizon and a dark disk hung like a surreal Dali painting. I felt like we had suddenly been transported to an alien planet for about 90 seconds. Oddly a centipede chose to crawl over my blanket just as the sun reached totality.
The solar disk is partially obscured in this photo.
The sun reappeared gradually over the following hour, though again it was hard to see an appreciable change in light levels after totality ended. Most people packed up and left, though a dedicated duo of amateur eclipse watchers from New Jersey told us they were staying right to the end.
If you missed this one, don’t worry, as North America will experience another total eclipse in August 2026. Unfortunately the part of North America that you will see it is eastern Greenland, so some travelling, perhaps including dogsled, may be involved.
Photo Credits
All photos by Stella van der Lugt
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