A Dedicated Umbraphile
Four Eclipses with More to Come
2017.09.24
After my seeing a fourth solar eclipse, my
daughter JoAnne labels me as an umbraphile – an
addict to total solar eclipses. The snapshot at left was taken during the eclipse
0n 2017.08.21 and the reason the Moon looks bright while blocking the Sun is
that the Earth reflects a lot of sunlight back onto it.
Here is my history.
4. In August 2017, I drove to Reno to link up with son Mark and his family for a
drive to Twin Falls, Idaho, where we spent a night, then went on to Sun Valley
and another 20 miles up that valley to a high-altitude site in a forest near
the centerline of the solar eclipse of August 21. There we met some other
friendly folks and greatly enjoyed the show.
Future Eclipses. As you may know, the
oval shape of the Moon’s orbit around the Earth causes its distance from Earth
to vary, so when it is far away and moves in front of the Sun it often does not
fully block the sunlight. In fact, most eclipses are either partial (with the
moon blocking only part of the sun, along an edge) or annular (with the Moon covering the Sun's center, leaving
the Sun's visible outer edges to form a “ring of fire” or annulus around the
Moon).
Over time, the Moon is moving further from Earth, with the result that
fewer of the future eclipses will be total eclipses and eventually they will
stop completely, though not in our lifetimes.
The next total eclipse
will occur on 2019.07.02 in the South Pacific as well as central Chile and
Argentina. For a description of recent and many future eclipses go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_the_21st_century.
Happily, with any luck, I will have many more opportunities to witness total eclipses. As discussed at the end of my Bucket List, I plan to live to age 112, which will take me into the year 2043, so according to the list cited just above, I may have a shot on the following dates: 2020.12.19, 2021.12.04, 2024.04.08, 2026.08.12, 2027.08.02, 2028.07.22, 2030.11.25, 2033.03.30, 2034.03.20, 2035.09.02, 2037.07.13, 2038.12.26, 2039.12.26, 2041.04.30, 2042.04.20, 2043.04.09. That is a total of 17 such events, which may be more than I have time for.