In June 2001, physicist and self-styled “eclipse chaser” Frank Close found himself at an isolated roadside stop deep in the Zambian bush, chatting with a small local boy. Close was trying to explain his purpose in being at this remote outpost, why he had traveled all the way from England—some 5,000 miles—to experience a three-minute total eclipse of the sun.
The boy was skeptical. “Who’s arranged this eclipse?” he wanted to know. Close explained that nobody had arranged the eclipse, that it was a natural phenomenon: “Sometimes when the moon crosses the sky, it gets in the way of the sun.” That’s about as parsimonious a definition of a solar eclipse as possible, but the boy pushed for more, so Close expanded:
This accurate if simplified explanation satisfied the Zambian child, and it may be a perfectly good summary for most readers of this highly personal introduction to the science and history and lore of solar eclipses. For those who want more technical matter—who like the Zambian boy want to know why-here/why-now/why-not-another-time-and-place?—there is plenty here, strewn throughout the first-person narratives of Close’s global treks over a lifetime of eclipse chasing.
This is not A Novice’s Guide to Eclipses; but even so, this neophyte found the science captivating. We learn, for example, why total solar eclipses are relatively rare—one occurs about once every 18 months—and why many of these phenomena are fleetingly brief and visible only in the planet’s most remote locales. That total solar eclipses occur at all is really a “cosmic coincidence,” Close explains: The sun is both 400 times broader than the moon and 400 times further away. This is why the sun and moon appear to be the same size. So if the moon is lined up directly with the sun, it completely and precisely blocks it from view.
A lot follows from this cosmic coincidence. Close explains how scientists can predict eclipses with remarkable accuracy, and how they use this scientific understanding of eclipses to illuminate human history and theology. Since we can compute the location and timing of eclipses, these same computations can also be used to calculate backwards into history, to identify the dates of famous eclipses.
For example, the crucifixion of Jesus is said to have taken place during a dramatic eclipse. Acts 2:20 describes the event this way: “The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood.” Three gospels tell essentially the same story of darkness at noon, leading eclipse experts to conclude that the crucifixion took place during a total lunar eclipse, dated precisely to Friday, April 3, 33 a.d.
Similarly, the Book of Genesis tells of Abraham in Canaan this way: “When the sun was going down, great darkness fell upon him.” The location and timing fit with a solar eclipse that occurred on May 9, 1533 b.c. Another famous eclipse, recorded in Joshua, includes a miracle: The moon and sun appear to stop, and even reverse their motion. No doubt, the eclipse occurred in September 1131 b.c., but the “miracle” is physically impossible, leading Close and others to suspect an optical illusion associated with a total eclipse. Close makes it his personal mission, as an eclipse chaser, to witness and verify this optical illusion. It’s a backstory that runs through this volume.
As fascinating as the science and culture of eclipses are, it is Close’s personal search, actual and spiritual, that makes this book special. As a particle physicist, Close approaches his topic with all the rigor of a scientific mind, but clearly, eclipses are for him something more than a natural phenomenon to be observed and measured and described. They are psychologically powerful and spiritually uplifting, life-changing, even (to use a most unscientific word) magical.
Close’s enduring fascination with eclipses began in midsummer 1954, when he was just a schoolboy of 8, at St. Mark’s County Primary School in Peterborough, England. His teacher was Mr. Laxton, a generalist who taught classrooms of 50 pre-teens everything from multiplication tables and historical facts to penmanship. Luckily for Close and his classmates, however, Mr. Laxton was both passionate and knowledgeable about eclipses—and just as important, he knew how to observe one properly. The older students were excused from the regular classes to witness an eclipse of the sun, and in the proc-ess they learned how to take rudimentary measurements, to conduct a simple scientific investigation. It’s fair to say that Mr. Laxton whetted the young Close’s appetite, not only for eclipses but also for the scientific method: for fact, deduction, prediction, knowledge.
Happily, Close’s first eclipse was a fairly dramatic experience. It filled the pages of the local newspaper. But it was only a partial eclipse. Mr. Laxton made a lesson of this, and taught the students why they had not experienced “totality.” In doing so, he tried to spark their imagination and desire for the big prize. Totality, Close recalls him saying, “was a sight to behold, and if ever we were lucky enough to see one, the experience would be unforgettable. He couldn’t explain why, except to say that if it happened, we would know what he meant.”
This early experience—and Mr. Laxton’s lyricism and passion—did, indeed, spark Close’s imagination and launched him on a lifelong quest, one that took him to Cornwall, Zambia, the deserts of Libya, the seas of the Pacific, and more. Along the way, we as readers get to share both his disappointments (the weather doesn’t always cooperate) and his ecstasy. His quixotic spirit is infectious, and we come to occupy the odd subculture of dedicated eclipse chasers. This fraternity is almost like a secret society, with its private language, rituals, and mantras. This shared mission has spawned an industry in the manufacture of memorabilia—buttons and T-shirts displaying the latitude and longitude and path of each eclipse—not to mention the substantial travel and tourist economy created by these privileged jet-setters who criss-cross the globe in search of ecstatic moments.
We meet some true oddballs on this pilgrimage, which one devotee describes as “a Grateful Dead concert, but without the drugs.” Close concedes that it’s a blurry line between passion and mental instability: “Like druids, who gather to greet equinoxes at Stonehenge, I had joined an international cult whose members worship the death and rebirth of the sun at moveable Meccas, about half a dozen times every decade.” He was not prepared for the delusional thinking and the full “spectrum of weirdness,” which includes believers in UFOs, alien abduction, and more.
But the “fantasy parallel universe” is a small segment of the whole eclipse-chasing culture. Science and wonder mix seamlessly in this tale, but Close is a scientist first and foremost and has spent his life, since his initiation in Peterborough in 1954, trading in facts. Facts and science are under attack in Western society today, the victims of the worst kind of magical thinking, and it’s difficult to read this scientific memoir without fretting about the scientific enterprise. Close wasn’t entirely successful convincing the skeptical Zambian boy of scientific authority regarding solar eclipses, but he did get him thinking, and he got this concession:
Soon there will be another dramatic cosmic coincidence, and scientists will have another opportunity to convince skeptics of the value and validity of scientific thought. Scientists are predicting that this summer—on August 21, to be precise—a total solar eclipse will darken a narrow belt across the United States from Oregon to South Carolina. Upwards of 200 million people will gather across the country to witness the phenomenon, making it “the most watched total solar eclipse in history.” Most of those who turn out for this dramatic event will already believe in scientific prediction, but perhaps a few skeptics will go home less skeptical.
Wray Herbert is the author, most recently, of On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits.
