While Monday’s total solar eclipse in the US will be a once-in-a-lifetime sky show for millions, there is a small group of people who have experienced it all before.
Glenn Schneider has seen 33. Fred Espenak has watched 28. Donald Liebenberg has logged 26. For newbie Kate Russo, it is 10 and counting.
These veteran eclipse chasers spend lots of money and craft intricate plans all to experience another midday darkening of the sky.
Photo: Reuters
“I do this not so much as an avocation, but as an addiction,” said Schneider, a University of Arizona astronomer.
Russo, a psychologist in Ireland who wrote a book about people’s eclipse experiences, said some people find the experience life-changing. That happened to her.
“Eclipse chasing isn’t just a hobby or interest,” Russo said. “Eclipse chasing is a way of life. It becomes who you are.”
Monday’s eclipse will cut a 112km path of totality across the US, when the moon moves between Earth and the sun, blocking it for as much as two minutes. It is the first US coast-to-coast full eclipse since 1918.
Total solar eclipses happen on average every 18 months or so, but they usually are not near easy-to-drive highways.
Norma Liebenberg has been to a dozen, mostly joining her avid eclipse watcher husband, Donald, in remote places like Libya, Zambia and western China.
There is a compulsiveness to eclipse chasers, especially photographers, said Gordon Telepun, an Alabama plastic surgeon who has only seen three.
“It’s very anxiety producing, it’s very challenging,” Telepun said. “It’s an adrenaline rush man, I’m telling you.”
Telepun said his hero is “Mr Eclipse” Espenak, a retired NASA astrophysicist, who explains why chasers are the way they are.
“It’s the closest any of us will come to being an astronaut and being in space,” Espenak said.
Eclipse chasers say their first always hooks them.
Schneider was 14 in 1970 and traveled from New York City to East Carolina University’s stadium. He had choreographed how he was going to spend the two minutes 53 seconds of darkness. Then came the moment.
“I was frozen in place,” he said. “I had binoculars around my neck for two and a half minutes and I never picked them up.”
“I was shaking. I was crying. I was overwhelmed,” he said. “It was at that instant when I said ‘Yeah, this is what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.’”
A veteran of 28 eclipses, Espenak often leads groups of about 50 people to view eclipses, lecturing both about the beauty and the science, except when the hour grows close and the skies get dark, he goes silent.
“On eclipse day he’s all business. He does not want to be diverted from his checklist of everything he wants to do,” said University of Tennessee’s Mark Littmann, coauthor with Espenak of the book Totality.
“It’s like you’re kind of trying to chat with a pilot coming in for an emergency landing. It isn’t that he’s just not friendly, it’s just not the right time anymore,” he said.
Donald Liebenberg has seen and blogged about his 26 eclipses for Clemson University, where he does research.
He holds the record for most time in totality, because the retired federal scientist used to view them by airplane whenever possible.
In 1973, he convinced the French to let him use the supersonic Concorde for eclipse viewing and he flew at twice the speed of sound. He got 74 minutes of eclipse time in that one flight.
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