Sophie Weston revisits her first solar eclipse and is moved all over again.
This week it has been almost impossible to avoid the eclipse effect on broadcast news and social media. I didn’t take much notice at first.
Now, this is odd. I’m normally very hopeful over such things. The moment some friendly stargazer announces a blood moon or a meteor shower, it goes into the diary. Then I get out my binoculars and go out onto my fourth floor balcony at whatever ungodly hour is foretold and follow whatever celestial map and directions I have managed to acquire.
With very little success, I have to admit. For the balcony in question is in central London.
The light pollution is pretty much total. And the chances of the skies over this wet northern land being overcast at any time of day are tending towards 90% certainty.
When I’m trying to get in touch with my inner astronomer, anyway. I am therefore used to disappointment. The beautiful image above is pure wish fulfillment.
And these last few weeks have been very busy for me, as well as subject to heatwave after heatwave.
In fact, temperatures of 37 degrees have brought both me and my companion cat to our respective knees. So I wasn’t looking to take on any non-essential activity, however theoretically alluring.
Was I, with a badly overdue deadline still hanging over my head, going to break off writing in the early evening? And that simply to experience a bit of untimely darkening of the sky, unless I set up a Viewing Box! Or, more likely, look at clouds through my binoculars, possibly changing their pre sunset colours? No. I was time poor. It would be wasteful.
Eclipse Memory
And then, in the middle of an overheated and vain attempt to sleep I had a sort of waking dream, recalling a solar eclipse from my childhood.
Don’t mistake me. This was not a recovered memory. I’ve remembered the occasion from time to time over the years, mostly I think, because it was so curious. But this time it came back vividly; in particular, the physical sensations of the experience. And the feeling.
I remember it was around noon in the middle of the week. I wasn’t yet going to school. My mother suddenly said, “We must go and see the eclipse,” and we went out into the street, where people were beginning to gather. This had never happened before. It was exciting.
A few people had bought special cardboard glasses with dark oblong lenses that made them look like aliens from a Dan Dare story. One enterprising grandfather produced a Viewing Box, made from a cornflakes packet. To use it, he made his family turn their backs on the sun, which struck me as odd at the time. (No, he didn’t explain how it worked but this YouTube video shows you the principle.)
There was general milling about. The scientifically-minded grandfather and a lady who worked at Heinz, and was an amateur astronomer, explained what was happening. My mother told me that we were going to look at the sky but not directly into the sun. And it would probably go dark.
Eclipse Sensations
And, oh, it did. A strange, eerie dark, like my father’s old army blanket hung from the sky, started to fall. It felt quite different from ordinary night time darkness. Other-worldly.
It came down rather slowly and sort of deliberately, as if something was enjoying turning the light down. (This was before the days of dimmer switches, you understand.)
As the light went, it got really cold. My mother shivered and took my hand. I think it gave her the creeps a bit. It made me even more excited. It was so strange!
Everyone went quiet, too. Not quiet like in church, through which I never knew what to do except try not to fidget. Quiet like they were all thinking really deeply and purposefully. And I was completely absorbed by every moment of the sequence.
In retrospect, I think that was the first time I ever felt at one with a group. I was not just a child to be told what to do. Nor a fellow-small who had to play nice. Definitely I was not alone in the experience. But I was wholly me, ageless, thinking and feeling, along with a bunch of other people who were equally thinking and feeling.
Steady. Poised for whatever came next. Quietly joyful.
It was very serene.
Tired and thoroughly miserable, as I was on Tuesday night, remembering those profound moments calmed my busy brain.
Eclipse 2026
So I did take the time to stop and look at the sky to witness Wednesday’s solar eclipse, after all.
I didn’t see any group gathering in the street, so went up to my balcony. The sun was out of sight behind my neighbours’ roofs and a little light cloud.
It didn’t get very dark. I think it got colder, but there was so much accumulated heat in the walls by now, that I didn’t shiver.
None of that mattered. I was present. And full of that old advenure.
Later, out of curiosity, I watched other people experiencing the eclipse and it made me remember that feeling of stillness and perfect readiness.
I see that Brian May, watching with astronomers in Spain, called the eclipse “eerie and strange,” which I certainly remember but was not my experience this year. But he also called it “a moment of totality”.
I think my four-year old self agreed. And loved it. And sort of handed it on to Now Me.
The Eclipse Effect, both then and this last week, has stopped me dead in my tracks. Then gave me something I was not expecting. This time it has left me in a place of creative calm. It is very strange and rather reassuring. Long may it last!
Sophie
Such an evocative post, Sophie. My own childhood memories of this eclipse are very vivid. A never to be forgotten moment.
Fascinating, isn’t it, Liz? Really strong impact.
Really interesting that you and Liz remember it. I have no memory at all of an eclipse. Unless maybe it wasn’t visible in Scotland? No idea on that, though it did rain a lot when I was a kid in Scotland 😉
It clearly made a big impact! What interests me is that I remember my mother being a bit unsettled by it, whereas I, a noted scaredy cat for as long as I can remember, was just energised. Maybe I was so young the anxiety synaps hadn’t fully fledged yet.
What a lovely post, Sophie thank you for sharing it with us. I can only remember the eclipse of 1999. We were in Yorkshire and it was a sunny day, so when the eclipse happened we could actually see it (with glasses, of course) and we did notice the cold and the darker skies. This time, from the western coast of the Highlands, we had wall to wall cloud, which was very disappointing, and it grew only a little darker, hardly enough to notice. However, the cloud cover did thin about half way through the eclipse and the sun was visible as a white disk with the moon as a dark shape in front of it. I will take that as a win!
You did better than we did here, Sarah. So glad you enjoyed the blog.
I’m lucky to live in the country outside Adelaide so the light pollution isn’t too bad. A lunar eclipse is always spectacular as long as there’s no cloud cover. The most enjoyable solar eclipse I ever saw was back in the 90s when I was teaching. The senior physics teacher had it all set up so the entire school could enjoy it safely, complete with the proper dark glasses. Then a few years ago when Saturn and Jupiter were aligned, I invited us over to a friend’s place where they have a Serious Astronomical Telescope. Cloud cover threatened, but cleared by the time we’d finished dinner. I think though, that my favourite astronomical event was the Transit of Venus in 2012. The South Australian Astronomy Society set up in the city behind Parliament House so I took the younger son out of school for the day so he could see it. Not happening again in our lifetimes, so I thought it was something he should see. Of course, the Transit of Venus has significance for Australians because that’s why Captain James Cook was in the South Pacific in 1769 on a joint expedition with the French to observe it from different points on the globe and calculate the distance to the sun. Famously, his ship Endeavour was later nearly sunk when they hit the Great Barrier Reef. Anyway, it was extremely cool to see it. It was visible without a telescope but with the dark glasses they handed out, but looking through one of the telescopes, the man helping us pointed out a solar flare. Fifty thousand miles long! My mind boggled.