1999's total eclipse of the sun was the last of that millennium, and I was lucky enough to be able to travel down to Cornwall (a ten hour drive, not including breaks, but well worth it) to observe the whole thing.
There was a lot of hype about this eclipse. Not only was it the first to be visible in the UK since 1927, it was also, on account of its particular date, the cause of great excitement among astrologers and doomsayers over the centuries. Nostradamus predicted that a great flying monster would sweep down from the sky to devour everyone. If this happened, I didn't see it, but I figured that Godzilla would've easily seen off such a monster anyhow. Other people were excited because totality occurred at 11:11 on the 11th, providing an extra special reason to keep one eye on that digital watch. Some of the old Norse prophecies which I've studied, especially those relating to Ragnarok and the end of this cycle of life, fitted the circumstances nicely, so much so that I wondered how much they might have been influenced by eclipse experiences in the past. I wore a rune for Heimdall, father of the goths, in case the ice giants should happen to turn up and he should need me to make a loud noise and help him wake the other gods. One never knows.
One thing which practically everyone had predicted was that Cornwall would be overwhelmed by visitors wanting to watch the eclipse. A lot of hotels and campsites raised their prices dramatically. I saw one self-catering house trying to hire itself out for eight thousand pounds for the week. Eep. If I had eight thousand pounds I'd use it as a deposit and buy a house to watch the eclipse in, which would probably work out much more reasonably. As it was, Neil (aka The Emperor Penguin) found us a farm which charged only seven pounds per tent per night to camp in its field, and we only shared the field with two other groups, so that was just lovely. There was a swimming pool to exercise in, and friendly dogs, and wide-eyed wee children excited about the fireworks. For the event itself, Neil, Donald and I wandered up into the top field where we were quite alone and could see no other human in the ten or more miles of countryside which we surveyed through our telescope. We saw sheep in two groups, one of which freaked out and the other of which was completely blase about the whole thing. We saw cows who took advantage of the chance for an extra nap, but were unperturbed. We saw crows who spent half an hour fighting over sleeping spaces at the unexpected nightfall and then the next half hour yelling at each other because it was time to get up again. Most of the wee birds sang their evening songs and went quiet, then gave a brief dawn chorus upon the return of the sun. The chickens were mostly nonplussed, and didn't bother trying to roost or anything, but one cockerel failed his san check badly and spent several hours afterward curled up in the dark of his box calling cock-a-doodle-doo and refusing to calm down. Observing these reactions in animals gives us, I suppose, an idea of how eclipses must have seemed to humans who did not expect them, or who had no understanding of them, in ages past.
All in all, I wouldn't say that my experience of the eclipse was a spectacular one, as it was too cloudy for me to see stars, the full corona, or the brightly glowing planets in the sky, and in many ways it was not unlike being beneath darkening stormclouds, but there were aspects of it which surprised and unnerved me a little. I hadn't realised much ahead of time that the whole process would last for so long. For about an hour and a half the sun was sufficiently covered by the moon that the world turned the wrong colour, disturbing in a way hard to place, reminding me perhaps of The House on the Borderland. Or rather, the world turned its natural colour, the usual optical illusions being gone, and perhaps that was the most disturbing aspect of it. Everything was very green, the sky and the grass and my own skin. Overhead, the crescent sun sailed between patches of pale cloud which broke to reveal a dark sky, perhaps no darker than during a normal night, but different looking again, giving something of the sensation of peering downwards into a dizzying pit. I felt a peculiar sense of urgency, my body telling me that the odd light meant a storm was coming on and I ought to get indoors; even though I knew what was really happening, it made all my nerves tingle. Then, towards totality, the darkness came on with startling suddenness, as if there were a circle of night around us drawing in in waves, encircling and smothering us, always thicker and greener. It was frightening and awe inspiring, appealing to a variety of primitive instincts. I felt as if I were in the presence of something unimaginably more powerful than myself, a feeling only encouraged by the knowlege that any one of those tiny little flares of light encircling the black disc where the sun had been was big enough to swallow entirely several hundred worlds the size of this puny Earth. As the light returned, I felt an enormous sense of relief and joy, and an instinctive appreciation of the sun stronger than any I had previously known, as it was demonstrated how even just the tiniest beam of sunlight can light up the whole world. It really was much more dramatic, in that regard, than I had ever expected.
I've been fascinated by eclipses since I was a small child. When they occur, astronomy ceases to be a distant practice involving the patient mapping of little dots against a void; it becomes instead something very real, immediate, physical and surprisingly emotional. The temperature drop when the sun disappeared was considerable, and with every fraction that the moon rolled away from it, warmth returned to the Earth, enormously comforting. Against one another, the moon and sun were clearly globes rather than flat shapes. Many secrets of the mechanics of the universe were visible to the naked eye. I think it gave me an inkling of why it is that some astronauts are so overwhelmed by their experiences of seeing the Earth and other such bodies from space. I would recommend eclipse watching to anyone.
Last updated 13th May, 2005