Saturday morning while my husband Al and I ate our BLT breakfast, we enjoyed reading about next Monday’s (August 21, 2017) solar eclipse. This is a big deal since it’s the first time in a century 0.5 percent of the earth obscured by the moon’s shadow will cross the whole of North America, starting in northwest Oregon heading kitty-corner across our nation into South Carolina.
Folks are getting excited! A local well known, free-lance professional photographer ordered 10 pairs of special viewing glasses from Amazon with plans to view this phenomena in Evansville. My neighbor Cathie came home from southern Illinois with 16 pairs of glasses, sold for $1.50 each at Carbondale’s Mexican restaurant, Tres Hombres, to share with friends and family. Apparently southern Illinois is expecting thousands of extra spectators a week from today.
British particle physicist Frank Close describes this total solar eclipse as taking about an hour for the moon to cover the sun. When the bright disc shrinks to a sliver and twilight falls, the temperature drops, and from the west, the moon shadow moves in, creating a wall of darkness.
“Look up and you will see stars as if it were normal night, but accompanied by a blackened moon surrounded by the sun’s shimmering white corona. . .and as one observer described, ‘looking into the valley of death with the lights of heaven far away calling me to enter.’ Another exclaimed: ‘Is that the eye of God?’” (Frank Close, 8.12.17, Daily Journal: Tracking ‘the eye of God’: A U.S. Solar Eclipse)
For those of us who often take God’s glory for granted, let’s go outside, with our eyes protected, between 2 – 2:30pm next Monday and watch how the heavens and earth are truly God’s footstool.
“This is what the LORD says: ‘Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” declares the LORD. Isaiah 66:1-2 NIV
Eclipse Schedule for Monday, August 21, 2017
12:57 pm – Countdown begins
2:24 pm – Maximum viewing
3:48 pm – Ends
Magnitude: 0.93
https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/usa/indianapolis
photo by: Dennis DiCicco, https://eclipse.aas.org/resources/images-videos
Great article.