Since I was young, I’ve been fascinated by eclipses. If anything can make you feel the mystery and wonder of life, it’s an eclipse. Also, my family, going back generations, has a history with them.
Eclipses are literally dangerous. Looking into one without proper protection can damage our eyes and even cause blindness. Although they are a natural wonder, maybe they’re also a sight that we shouldn’t behold. And that’s not just because we want to protect our eyes.
Even though eclipses seem rare, they happen every year and even have seasons. We’re heading into eclipse season tomorrow, which will be the first in the set, and a solar eclipse. Eclipses happen with new moons and full moons. So one eclipse follows the other. The second eclipse in this set will be with the full moon on October 28th, and a lunar eclipse.
On Chani Nicholas’s weekly astrology podcast, she dives deep into eclipse season. I’ve heard her take on eclipses elsewhere and find it quite striking. She doesn’t think it’s bad or good to look at them, but she prefers not to watch them and just lets them do their thing.
She discusses how eclipses are caused by the light being blocked from our luminaries, the sun and moon, which causes shadows. Basically the connection to our power source or energy is being interfered with and becomes unstable, so there are energy surges. Generally, when we think of things in shadow and power outages, that might not be something we want to invite into our lives. There is a lack of clarity and unpredictability. Things may not be as they seem and maybe we need to wait it out. Also we may feel drained of our energy. So if we’re feeling tired tomorrow, it’s to be expected.
Also, she says that eclipses are about the speeding up of endings and beginnings. The one tomorrow is about release and letting things go. This makes a lot of sense to me. As I mentioned in a post back in August, my federal student loans were forgiven. Which was wonderful, I didn’t have to make payments. However, they were still showing up on my credit report, so it didn’t truly feel like they were gone. The weight of them wasn’t completely gone. Today, they finally disappeared from my credit report! I can fully let them go energetically. They are really gone. Maybe the upcoming eclipse helped sweep them away.
Anyway, if you’re looking for a safer alternative to following tomorrow’s eclipse, NASA has you covered with their new 2023 Eclipse Explorer: Your Interactive Guide to the 2023 Annular Solar Eclipse.
Needless to say, NASA will be busy tomorrow. Did you hear that NASA plans to fire rockets directly into the eclipse’s shadow? Kind of wild. The article on the NASA website explains more.
“The mission, known as Atmospheric Perturbations around the Eclipse Path or APEP, is led by Aroh Barjatya, a professor of engineering physics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he directs the Space and Atmospheric Instrumentation Lab.
Some 50 miles up and beyond, the air itself becomes electric. Scientists call this atmospheric layer the ionosphere because it is where the UV component of sunlight can pry electrons away from atoms to form a sea of high-flying ions and electrons. The Sun’s constant energy keeps these mutually attracted particles separated throughout the day. But as the Sun dips below the horizon, many recombine into neutral atoms for the night, only to part ways again at sunrise.
During a solar eclipse, the sunlight vanishes and reappears over a small part of the landscape almost at once. In a flash, ionospheric temperature and density drop, then rise again, sending waves rippling through the ionosphere. …
The APEP team plans to launch three rockets in succession – one about 35 minutes before local peak eclipse, one during peak eclipse, and one 35 minutes after. They will fly just outside the path of annularity, where the Moon passes directly in front of the Sun. Each rocket will deploy four small scientific instruments that will measure changes in electric and magnetic fields, density, and temperature. If they are successful, these will be the first simultaneous measurements taken from multiple locations in the ionosphere during a solar eclipse.”
It will be fascinating to learn their findings and see the changes that this eclipse season brings.
