The morning of Monday, April 8, 2024 in Cleveland, Ohio dawned with cloudy skies.
I'd been anxiously checking weather reports for the week leading up to that date, hoping to see a forecast for a clear day for the once-in-a-lifetime (without traveling) total solar eclipse. Instead I'd been seeing a very uncertain forecast, oscillating between partly and mostly cloudy. For the past few days I'd been checking the hourly percentage cloud cover forecast on the 8th for Cleveland and other locations within a few hours' drive, trying to decide whether Erin and I should drive somewhere to increase our chances of seeing the eclipse unobscured by clouds. Around 24 hours out it was starting to look like maybe we should - our forecast was at around 50% cloud cover, and there were locations to our west at around 25%. But when I woke up early on the morning of the 8th I saw those predicted differences had mostly disappeared. No real point, then, in dealing with the headache of traffic to travel out of town. In Cleveland, as I recall, the cloud cover forecast for 3 pm (totality would begin at 3:13) had settled to a percentage in the mid 40s - meaning, apparently, that we had slightly better than a coin flip's odds of seeing the sun when totality hit.
The clouds parted by late morning. When Erin and I rode our bikes down the hill into Little Italy to take a red line train to the west side, it had become a beautiful, sunny day, the sky a bright blue with few clouds in sight. Could this really be happening? Were we going to get a perfect day for eclipse viewing, in Cleveland, Ohio, in April?
We exited the train in Ohio City and then rode our bikes several miles to Edgewater Park on the shore of Lake Erie, which was very predictably an eclipse viewing hot spot. After locking up our bikes, we headed over to a very familiar spot for us, the rocks by the iconic Edgewater willow tree, and settled in.
The skies were not nearly as clear as they had been an hour prior. Anxiety about the clouds returned - but there was nothing we could do about it. No sense worrying about something out of our control.
By the time the eclipse's start was imminent, most of the sky was in fact covered in clouds, but a very thin layer of clouds so that the sun still shone through. We eagerly counted down the moments, donning our eclipse glasses and looking upward.
Right on time, at 1:59 pm, the shadow of the moon began to creep across the face of the sun.
I do hope people appreciate just how amazing it is that we humans are able to predict with such precision and accuracy the times and locations at which these events will occur. Like so many other wonders of the modern world, it's easy to take for granted, but it's something that is only possible thanks to the cumulative efforts and ingenuity and combined knowledge of countless people working at these very difficult problems over years and decades and centuries and millennia.
Biologically, we humans aren't really much different from humans who lived ten thousand years ago. We aren't endowed at birth with significantly more intelligence or ability to understand the world we inhabit. But a human back then who encountered a total solar eclipse would (1) have no idea ahead of time that it was going to happen, (2) have no clue what was going on, and (3) probably find the experience pretty terrifying. A human today can know exactly when the eclipse will happen and look up in the sky in both awe and understanding at the cosmic dance unfolding overhead. This is despite the fact that no individual human, starting from scratch, could ever have worked out all the details of these phenomena. As a scientist, I think about these things often, with amazement and gratitude.
For most of its duration, this eclipse was not a new experience for me. I'd experienced >80% solar eclipses in both 1994 (at age 10, a momentous experience in a young future scientist's life) and 2017.
The 1994 eclipse, I see now, was an annular eclipse - not a total eclipse anywhere, but at the center of the path the moon's shadow was completely inside the sun. And Cleveland got annularity, but I lived in Columbus at the time. Funny, that.
In 2017, I could have experienced totality had I extended an unrelated vacation by a few days to stay out in Oregon with my parents, but opted not to take extra time off work. In retrospect, this was a poor decision.
So here's the thing about solar eclipses. I'd heard this said before, but I never appreciated the extent to which it's true until I experienced it myself. There are partial solar eclipses, and there are total solar eclipses. And a partial solar eclipse is a really cool thing to witness, but a total solar eclipse is... just something else. And nothing, nothing, can prepare you for what it's like to experience a total solar eclipse in person until you actually do it yourself.
We've all seen countless pictures of solar eclipses by now. Here's a picture I took approximately 35 minutes into the eclipse:
This picture looks basically just like what you'd see if you were looking at the eclipse, in person, through eclipse glasses. Obviously there are much higher quality pictures out there, but looking at a really high quality picture of a partial solar eclipse still looks basically just like what you'd see if you were looking at the eclipse, in person, through a telescope with a solar filter. Seeing a partial solar eclipse in person, from a purely visual standpoint, isn't all that different from seeing a picture of a partial solar eclipse.
As more and more of the sun's surface was covered and the daylight began to grow dimmer and the air noticeably cooled, I found myself wondering if we were really going to get the full totality experience. A thin layer of clouds continued to cover most of the sky. The clouds were thin enough that the sun's light easily shone through, but I knew that the light from the sun's corona at totality wouldn't be nearly as bright as the light from the solar surface itself. Would we be able to see the corona very well, or even much at all, through the clouds? I didn't know! Obviously the sky would suddenly become much darker when totality was reached, but beyond that, would we be getting the visual spectacle we were hoping to see? Or would many of the people gathered there on the shores of Lake Erie end up feeling the whole thing was a bit of a letdown?
Again, there was nothing to gain by worrying about something outside my control, so I could only watch and wait and hope for the best. I looked up through my eclipse glasses as the last sliver of the sun's surface disappeared into nothingness. As I began to move the eclipse glasses away from my eyes, I remember hearing Erin next to me say, "Look at that" - or words to that effect. I looked up.
This is a picture I took of totality (edited simply to decrease the exposure level). Again, there are much higher quality pictures out there, but I'm pretty happy with how this turned out given my lack of fancy equipment:
We've all seen lots of pictures like this now. This is basically the standard totality shot everyone tries to get. It's a cool looking shot, right? The black circle of the moon's shadow with the heavenly white light of the corona encircling it. The pictures of partial eclipses look really cool, but this definitely looks a lot cooler.
Here's the thing about solar eclipses, though. Pictures of partial eclipses look really cool, and in fact, a good picture of a partial eclipse basically captures what you see looking at the eclipse in person.
Pictures of total eclipses look even cooler, but no picture can even remotely begin to capture the experience of seeing a total solar eclipse in person. It just can't be done. I've seen hundreds of great totality photos by now, and not a one even comes close.
I've seen a lot of really beautiful things in my life. Yosemite Valley, where Erin and I eloped in October, is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Seeing it in person definitely far exceeds seeing it in pictures... but a good picture of Yosemite Valley at least gives you a pretty good sense of what it would be like to see it in person.
A total solar eclipse might be the most unique visual experience any of us will ever have. It's so far outside the realm of normal human experience that I think our minds just can't comprehend what it's like to see it without actually seeing it. Our cameras can't capture the full range of light in a single image that our eyes can, and this is true for pictures of many things, but with most things we can at least imagine what they'd look like in person because they're in the realm of normal human experience. A total solar eclipse is simply outside of that realm.
When you look at the classic totality picture, you're seeing a white ring of light on a black background. That's it. It gives you no context for the rest of what you're seeing.
When I looked up at the fully eclipsed sun, I gasped, my eyes went wide and my jaw dropped, and I'm pretty sure I got at least a little misty-eyed. Seeing those pictures gave me absolutely no idea what it would be like to look up into the sky, a sky that even aside from the eclipsed sun was unlike any sky I'd ever seen before, and up in that sky to see what looked like a hole in the sky with the most beautiful white light I'd ever seen flowing out of it.
In comparison to the context-less white ring of light on a black background picture, this picture of mine gives a somewhat better sense of what it was like to see totality in person:
This picture helps me remember what that moment was like, but I feel like if I hadn't been there in person, it still wouldn't give me any real idea what it was like. There are countless far better pictures out there on the Internet. I've seen all sorts of stunning and beautiful photos of the eclipse. None comes close to the reality.
Another thing that must be mentioned about total solar eclipses is the incredibly improbable cosmic coincidence that allows us to see these spectacles. The disks of the moon and sun appear almost exactly identical in size in our sky. This is true because the sun's diameter is approximately 400 times the moon's diameter, and the sun is approximately 400 times as far away from the Earth as the moon is. There's no reason things have to be that way. It just happens that they are. If the moon were just a little smaller or farther away, total solar eclipses would never happen. If the moon were much larger or closer, there would still be total solar eclipses and they'd still undoubtedly be amazing, but the unforgettable sight of a black hole in the sky surrounded by a ring of glowing light is something we'd never get to witness. There's nowhere else in our solar system with eclipses nearly as spectacular as those we see. How many worlds are there in the universe, I wonder, where intelligent beings with the ability to understand what they're seeing are lucky enough to witness eclipses as amazing as those visible from our Earth? (I've seen it said that the apparent coincidence of the sun's and moon's apparent sizes in our sky is one of the best arguments for the existence of a higher power - after experiencing a total solar eclipse in person, I can see the appeal of this argument.)
In Cleveland, we were lucky to get almost four minutes of totality. I took a few pictures and then set my camera down. I've thought many times about the double-edged sword of taking lots of pictures of cool experiences (concerts, hikes, etc.) - it's really great to be able to look back on those pictures later and it helps you remember the original experience, but if you focus too much on taking pictures, it takes you out of the moment, and the original experience isn't as good as it might have been. These precious few minutes of totality were perhaps the best example of this dilemma that many will ever experience.
I just tried to take it all in - the sky, the lake, the enraptured crowds of people, the cool air, the sounds of birds calling in ways they never normally would in the middle of the afternoon - and most of all the magical sight of the moon's dark, perfectly circular shadow with the white light of the corona flowing over its edges and even a pinkish solar flare visible near the bottom. I hugged Erin. A part of me wished this moment could last forever. Of course it couldn't.
Perhaps the most beautiful moment of all was seeing the building glow of the sunrise over the edge of the moon's shadow just before totality ended. It was indescribably beautiful. The whole thing was, but especially that moment. It really was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.
And then it was over.
Erin said something to the effect of how it was interesting to have had this experience where there was this buildup, this intense anticipation of an event, and then it happened and for a few minutes we were basically transported to somewhere so different from anything we'd ever experienced - and then it was all over, and it felt like, did that really happen?
The crowds began to dissipate not long after totality ended. We'd planned to wait until after totality to check out the eclipse through a telescope the Cleveland Metroparks had set up, and were very disappointed to discover they had taken it down already even though there was still a good hour of eclipse left. Still, we hung around on the beach with a dwindling crowd of other "eclipse enthusiasts" (as we might say) until the moon's shadow had fully disappeared from the sun's surface. The entire thing was just a magical experience - totality, of course, by far the most magical, but why not savor it all?
April 8 was not only the day of a total solar eclipse, it was also the Guardians' home opener, always one of the most anticipated days of the year in Cleveland. We decided to ride our bikes to one of our favorite bars/restaurants Happy Dog to catch the game on TV. It ended up being a win for the home team, who are off to quite a hot start to the season. After watching most of the game, we rode to Mitchell's ice cream in Ohio City for the once-in-a-lifetime eclipse-themed ice cream sandwiches they were offering on that day only.
The ice cream sandwiches were disappointing, the cookie to ice cream ratio way off. Oh well, the rest of the day far exceeded expectations.
It was really nice to enjoy a day of riding our bikes around together to various fun destinations. It had been a while since we'd done this, the winter in Cleveland generally not being conducive to the activity. So this was actually the first such day we'd had as a married couple.
And what a day it was, one I'll surely look back on fondly for the rest of my life!
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