Our community celebrates solar eclipses like a lot of other communities do: they form “watch eclipse parties” and wait for the big moment.
The image above is one of the instances where the path of the eclipse happened to pass over our location. Yet, when I looked back through my photos of this eclipse about a year later, I noticed that it would have made a great 1950s sci-fi movie poster: “Alien Above,” or “They’re Coming from Outer Space!”
Eclipses, lunar and solar, are such amazing natural events. To me, I suppose, they represent human being’s attempts to manage time, understand the universe we live in, and just be awed by something so distant but large. Plus, it’s just really cool.
Ptolemy said that the Babylonians recorded eclipses; there are potential eclipses carved in stone in Ireland dating back to about 5,000 years ago, too. Even Christopher Columbus predicted a lunar eclipse once to save he and his crew’s hides while in the New World.
Even using tools and materials available to Galileo, we view eclipses today. We are still fascinated by astronomical events and hope we remain so.
The Imagists 