The eclipse chasers: Travelling the world for their astronomical hobby

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John Thompson’s fascination with observing the stars and planets began when he was six years old, growing up in Windsor, Ont.“My aunt had a series of nature guidebooks and the astronomy always interested me the most,” says the retired chemical engineer and Health Canada biologist, who now lives in Carlsbad Springs. “I built my first telescope in high school. I’ve built four or five more of them since.”

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If he had known that he could have carved out a career studying the stars, he would have gone down that road.

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Accordingly, the solar eclipse that will cross over a large swath of North America on Monday is his Super Bowl of star gazing. A Super Bowl that, on average, occurs only once every 400 years at any particular spot on the earth. The next one isn’t due for Ottawa until 2205.

But a total solar eclipse occurs somewhere on Earth about every 18 months. And so, the chasers chase.

Thompson is a self-described “eclipse chaser,” part of a passionate subset of the astronomical community who travel the globe to see as many eclipses as possible.

He saw his first at an isolated community in Central Java in Indonesia in 1983. In 1994, he was in the thin air of the Andes Mountains, near the border of Chile and Bolivia, 14,000 feet above sea level.

Then came the Easter Island experience in 2010, followed by a trip to Australia’s Queensland Rainforest two years later.

In 2017, he travelled to the Missouri-Indiana border to catch a glimpse of the last solar eclipse that ventured atop a piece of North America.

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“I had (originally) planned on doing one or two, but they become addictive,” said Thompson, a past president of the Ottawa chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. “It’s an otherworldly experience. Everything is changing all around you. The animals start to roost or go to sleep. In Missouri in 2017, the tree crickets went completely silent, but they came back in full force when it was over.”

At the peak moment, if there is no cloud cover, those looking at an eclipse will see the sun’s corona — the outer edges of the sun — encircling the moon.

Those armed with high-tech telescopes will see the solar flares within the corona.

“Every one is different,” said Thompson. “Some are darker than others, depending on whether it’s a wide or narrow eclipse. This one is average.”

On April 8, Ottawa will experience 98.9 per cent totality between 3:25 and 3:27 p.m., while Kingston, Brockville and spots along the St. Lawrence River will experience the full 100 percent phenomenon of the moon gliding past the sun.

What makes Monday’s eclipse rare is that so much of North America will be able to see it.

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The eclipse will migrate from Mexico into Texas and follow a northeasterly arc up through the United States. In Canada, the eclipse will first appear in southern Ontario, continuing on a path that will take it slightly south of Toronto and along a route over Kingston, Brockville and Cornwall and then further east to Sherbrooke and Fredericton.

“Very few eclipses travel over major cities,” said Thompson. “This is very rare. Usually, they’re seen in very uncivilized areas, with few tourists.”

By necessity, eclipse chasers also become weather experts, closely monitoring every change in condition leading up to eclipse day.

Sometimes, last-minute weather snafus are heartbreaking for those who travel long distances. That’s what occurred when Thompson was in Australia in 2012, missing out on the full effect when clouds appeared at the last moment in a seemingly ideal location he had staked out earlier.

“I’ve got a video of it and you can hear the disappointed voices,” he said. “People who stayed on the beach saw the whole thing.”

When thunderstorms arrived at his original chosen spot in Missouri in 2017, Thompson drove three hours east — in 100-degree Fahrenheit temperatures — to find sunny skies.

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This time around, he has chosen to check out the eclipse south of Ottawa because of the relatively wide scope of totality. He has scoped out several locations along the St. Lawrence River — between Kingston and Cornwall — and will move to the best possible spot, depending on if, when and where there is cloud cover.

He knows of others who have made their way south to Texas and Mexico, where the April weather is more conducive to sunny skies. Unfortunately, Texas is currently dealing with thunderstorms and tornadoes and the forecast is not promising for parts of Mexico.

Renowned popular astronomer Howard Simkover opted to check out Monday’s eclipse in Mexico, at a spot where the peak moment of totality will be four minutes and 28 seconds, more than a minute longer than what will be seen by skywatchers along the St. Lawrence River.

Simkover was a long-time board member of the Royal Astronomical Society and spent 21 years as a producer and lecturer at the Planétarium de Montreal, walking spectators through spectacles in space. He is also a regular speaker at Ottawa’s National Museum of Science and Technology.

He’s currently in San Miguel de Allende and plans on travelling to nearby Torreon for Monday’s show. Unless, of course, he needs to move in a hurry.

“Unfortunately, the forecast is looking iffy for Mexico,” Simkover said. “This will be my 22nd total solar eclipse. I have been chasing them for almost my whole life, in the U.S., Canada, South America, Indonesia, Africa (twice), Australia (four times) and the old USSR.”

Andrea Girones, an astrophotographer with Ottawa’s chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, has previously seen total solar eclipses near Timmins in 1979 and in Aruba in 1998. Last October, she was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to capture a total annular eclipse. Under such conditions, the moon appears like a dark spot on top of the brighter circle of the sun. It creates an image that looks like a ring around the moon.

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“My father was a pilot and he owned a small airplane and he took me someplace north when I was nine years old,” Girones said of the start of her eclipse passion in 1979.

Girones, who runs her own legal firm in Kanata, bought a telescope after starting her first full-time job. The hobby of seeing the skies in all their glory has only grown from there.

From buying a film camera and taking pictures of the Aruba eclipse — “at the time, you don’t even know if you’ve captured anything” — to now owning high-end digital equipment that she sets up in the backyard, her photography expertise has taken off.

Girones specializes in capturing nebulas and galaxies far away, along with fine details of the night sky, accompanied by picturesque sites including mountains and lakes.

Searching for an ideal location to capture Monday’s event, while also keeping track of the weather, has kept her up at night.

“It’s basically insane,” she said, with a laugh. “I’m trying to keep my head straight, trying to make it somewhere in the line of totality. I’m not sure where I will end up, but it will be somewhere between here and Kingston if the weather is good.”

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For the past three weeks, she has been monitoring five weather agencies, checking for hour-by-hour updates.

If she needs to go as far east to Sherbrooke or head southwest to the shores of Lake Ontario, so be it.

“You have to be mobile, a little fussier,” Girones said. “I’m not just observing. I need a place where I can set up the telescope and three cameras. It’s all about no cloud cover.”

Just like Thompson, Girones says Monday’s eclipse is creating such a big splash because so much of the population will be able to see it pass by.

“A lot of eclipses pass over the ocean or in the Arctic or Antarctic,” she said. “This is so special because it’s cutting a path across the continent. It will probably be the most photographed eclipse ever.”

kwarren@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/Citizenkwarren

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