Sky and Telescope - January 2018 - 14

COSMIC RELIEF by David Grinspoon

Cosmic Communion
Last summer's total solar eclipse provided a profound moment of
celestial accord for millions of Americans.

Eclipse-watchers in Charleston,
South Carolina, on August 21, 2017

the total solar eclipse bug, and I've
joined eclipse expeditions to other
countries to stand in the shadow, in
awe, with my fellow converts. In addition to the always sublime totality, this
offers an excuse for going new places,
following curves inscribed on the globe
by a cosmic airbrush, and meeting other
devotees along the way.
Totality has always been hard to
explain to those who've never experienced a total solar eclipse, so last
summer I was excited by the prospect
of so many friends and relatives, not
to mention vast multitudes of deserving strangers right here in my home
country, ﬁnally seeing what all the fuss
was about.
One thing I didn't worry about was
over-hyping it. In the run-up, one friend
- a planetary scientist, no less - posted
that she didn't see why everyone was so
worked up about a total eclipse. Naturally, when probed, she revealed that
14

JA N UA RY 2 018 * SK Y & TELESCOPE

she'd never actually seen one. Or rather,
I should say, never "been in" one. What
the uninitiated don't understand is
that totality is not merely something
interesting you observe at a distance,
but something that happens all around
you and inside you as well, transforming your inner and outer landscapes in
surprising ways.

For anyone who witnesses totality, the feeling of a deep bond
is unavoidable, and certain truths become apparent in our guts.
There's the growing, creeping
strangeness as totality approaches,
when the light slowly thins, the colors
become dreamlike, and the very air
seems somehow transmuted. And then
there's the intense, slightly frightening
exhilaration of totality - the brevity
adding to the thrill and the sense of
time dilation. It really does cleanse the
doors of our perception and put us into
an altered state.

In my worldview, the scientiﬁc and
the spiritual are melded in reverence for
nature. There's no time I've felt more in
tune with both than during a total solar
eclipse. A group of friends and I are
already contemplating a trip to Chile or
Argentina in July 2019.
¢ DAVID GRINSPOON, an astrobiologist,
author, and musician, can be followed on
Twitter as @DrFunkySpoon.

M A NDEL NG A N / A FP / G E T T Y IM AG ES

LIKE MANY OF YOU, I long ago caught

We astronomy fans are used to feeling connected to distant phenomena.
The site of an open star cluster seen
through a telescope moves us. Not
everyone gets this, but for anyone who
witnesses totality, the feeling of a deep
concord is unavoidable, and certain
truths that we know in our heads suddenly become apparent in our guts.
Our human senses are stubbornly
resistant to the Copernican insight
that we live on a celestial body and that
the sky is a vast landscape in which we
dwell. During totality we detect the
motions of Earth, Sun, and Moon, giving us a direct feel for the kinetic geometry of our universe. A veil of delusion
lifts when, during daylight, we brieﬂy
see the stars right where they always
are. I'm also always struck by how close
the Moon seems.
All this adds up to a moment of profound communion with the cosmos and
our fellow humans. Afterward, you feel
newly bonded with whomever you're
with. It's an experience we should never
take for granted.
The fact that we can appreciate this
arises from a great deal of cosmic evolution: the violent origin of our planet
and unusually large moon, evolution
of life, then animal life, then intelligent life and, in the last few centuries,
a scientiﬁc culture that can study the
cosmos. All of that culminates in this
experience and allows us to appreciate it
with both our heads and our hearts.

Sky and Telescope - January 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - January 2018