Sky & Telescope July 1988 [antikvár]

focal pointSolar-Eclipse SociologyIN THE SWELTERING Philippines,Maritess Gabrido of the Mindanao Mirror was well positioned to see the March 18th total solar eclipse, but she chose to stay indoors. The government had encouraged Filipinos to watch, but Maritess was pregnant, and her grandmother warned that if she saw the Moon block the Sun, her child would be born "freakish."So Maritess never witnessed totality. This makes her different from most people in that she knows she never witnessed totality.Almost everyone thinks he or she has seen a total solar eclipse, and almost everyone is wrong. On average, the path of totality crosses a given place on Earth just once every 400 years or so. Educated guesstimates based on this and other factors suggest that only 1 in 100 of us ever stands in the shadow of the Moon.Lots of people who are confused have seen partials. They don't understand that the difference between a total eclipse and a partial eclipse is the difference between night and day.But people who have seen the solar corona burst bright understand profoundly. In one way or another, they have seen God.Maybe the god is an ancient god, like the Indians' Phra Rahu, the Indonesians' Bathara Kala, or the Filipinos' Anitos, all demons trying to devour the Sun. Maybe there are two gods, like the Innuits' Padli and Amarok, the Sun and the Moon, making love. Or maybe the god has something to do with the horrified cry of "Bloom County" cartoonist Berke Brea-thed's dismayed, atheistic scientist: "The universe is a Uttle too darned orderly to be just a big accident!" The closely matched apparent sizes of the Sun and Moon make coronal eclipses possible it becomes easy to imagine divine design.About 200 years ago astronomers began mounting eclipse expeditions to work out the science of the spectacle. The first successful photograph of totality was made seven decades later, in northern Europe in 1851. The picture made eclipses a focus of the popular press.Scientists kept chasing the Moon's shadow to India, the Mediterranean, South Africa, Slam, and, in 1878, Pike's Peak. Their stories were full of adventure. In the 100 years that followed the Colorado excursion, Nalionai Geographic gotlots of great copy and pictures by sending its people to solar eclipses.Perhaps the 1970 and 1979 eclipses in North America damaged the mystique, the newsworthiness, that until then had surrounded totality. Tens of thousands of Americans witnessed the events. Media coverage was unprecedented, and millions saw the photos. Maybe people started thinking total eclipses were commonplace and that they themselves must have seen one somewhere, sometime.The I970's is certainly when eclipse chasing became popular among amateurs. They now routinely outnumber professional researchers in remote paths of totality, and this was the case March 18th. Political unrest on Mindanao scared most scientists away. The National Science Foundation refused to finance researchers, and more than 125 Japanese cancelled their plans. Yet specialty tour groups fared well. For example. New York's World of Oz put more than 200 ecUpse chasers on cruise ships safely at sea, and the British firm Explorers Travel took nearly 100 more to Mindanao itself. Others, like my friend Andrew Steinbrecher and me, saved our pennies and went to the Philippines on our own.I've heard veterans claim they will work two jobs, skip meals, and take out second mortgages to afford the next eclipse. A guy I met at the 1984 Coral Sea event joked that he sold his children into slavery for travel cash. (1 told him I robbed a bank.)Yet within the eclipse track, most indigenous people miss totality. Officials in northern Canada, India, and Indonesia all advised citizens to stay indoors during recent eclipses, lest they damage their eyes watching partial phases. And superstition still keeps many, like Maritess Gabrido, out of the dark.But those who stand in the shadow with open eyes realize instantly, without abstractions, that Homo sapiens roams the surface of a planet. For people in line with the Sun and the Moon, it is viscerally clear that humans belong to the universe. The experience is inescapably spiritual.On Baffin Island in 1979 I was embarrassed when I realized that I'd screamed in awe and joy throughout totality, perhaps polluting the eclipse for the people around me. But then I listened to a tape I'd made of the event and found that every one of us was screaming.Just after totality on Java in 1983, eclipse chaser Ruth Clarey said this to me: "On my first eclipse, when the Sun returned, 1 noticed that the people I was with had tears in their eyes. But before I could ask why, I realized I had tears in my eyes, too."JAMES EHMANNThe author, twice winner of the AAAS-iVestinghouse Science Journalism Award, is a columnist and science writer at the Post-Standard in Syracuse, New York.Focal Point invites contributions from read-ers who wish to comment on contemporaryissues in astronomy and space science.