On April 8, 2024, I experienced the "Great North American Solar Eclipse": a 100% totality solar eclipse. This was filmed at Lake Erie Community Park, in Lake City, Pennsylvania. This video fails to capture the incredible feeling of that moment: in the space of only a few minutes, the path of totality was shrouded in darkness, such as you might see after sunset. The weather forecast said "temperature may drop several degrees during the eclipse," but this was an understatement. I didn't check the temperature, but it felt as though it had become at least fifteen degrees colder in only a few minutes. Thirty minutes before this video was shot, when the eclipse was at about 50% totality, the clouds had dissipated and the sun was shining bright. It was warm enough to take off our jackets and enjoy the weather. But as the Moon moved across the face of the Sun and the darkness descended, the clouds suddenly thickened to the point where we feared we might not see the eclipse at all. I removed the solar filter film from my phone camera lens and simply recorded what little I could. The eclipse lasted a little more than three minutes, and we only saw brief glimpses of it through the clouds. But that was enough.
This was a moment I will remember forever: standing there in the darkness and the cold, looking up at the sky and seeing the clouds penetrated by a ghost of the sun, surrounded by its fiery ring. For those few minutes it felt there was no one else, that we had been cut off from the rest of the world. And then, across the water in the west, the sky turned red as if the dawn was approaching...but the sun was above us, not on the horizon. And then the moment passed, and the sky brightened again, and it was over.
Cast Iron Chaos on Facebook: / castironchaos
Cast Iron Chaos on Instagram: / ewmodemac
2 окт 2024
