The “Ring of Fire” eclipse of October 2, 2024 was a spectacular celestial event, and Dave Eicher saw it from an equally spectacular setting.
The annular eclipse experience was recorded here from Easter Island on October 2, 2024. Credit: Celine Chaya
Your editor is in the middle of a week-long trip to a very remote location. A few days ago I left Tucson and traveled to Santiago, Chile, where I met about 20 enthusiastic people who were excited to see the annular eclipse that occurred today. We spent two days touring the wonders of Santiago and nearby Valparaíso, which were spectacular. And then yesterday, we made the five and a half hour flight west from the Chilean coast to one of the most remote and historic places on the planet that I had not yet been to: Easter Island.
Today we had one of those astronomical triple play days that happen very rarely. Our intrepid group, led by our tour partner Cengiz Aras of Eclipse Traveler, set off at 6am for a remote viewing site on this small island. Arriving half an hour later, we positioned ourselves in front of a long row of famous Moai statues, created approximately between 1200 and 1500 AD, and prepared for sunrise.
The first sight of the day was seeing a really pristine, dark morning sky. We had brilliant winter constellations overhead: the glories of Orion, Taurus, Canis Major and the rest of the gang. We had planets: the dazzling Jupiter, Mars and Saturn. We had the splendors of the southern sky. I am always amazed to see the Orion Nebula and then look, in the same sky, to see the Carina Nebula, dwarfing Orion in size and brightness. We had Crux still over the horizon and the other deep sky wonders of Carina. We had the Magellanic Clouds, hazy and well defined, like bright spots of the Milky Way cut and moved, and the great 47 globular Tucanae next to the SMC.
And the glories kept coming. As dawn began to brighten, we saw the current comet sign, C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, really bright, perhaps second magnitude, rising to the east, among the row of Moai statues. It was an astonishing astronomical gift that seemed like something out of a movie, so dazzling was it.
And then we returned, after the sun rose, to our luxury hotel and prepared for a lecture I gave about the eclipse and its visualization. A few clouds jumped across the sky as we headed toward the eclipse site, but nothing too alarming. And sure enough, as 12:23 pm local time approached, we had clear skies with some small cumulus clouds passing overhead. We saw first contact and we were in the middle of an annular eclipse, one in which the Moon was relatively distant and therefore formed a somewhat small black disk trailing across the Sun. Again, the precision of the timing It impressed observers and we take our hats off to Johannes Kepler.
An hour and a half later, we witnessed the onset of annularity, giving us a “ring of fire” of sunlight around the Moon's disk, and our annular eclipse lasted 5 minutes 48 seconds (a long eclipse) before for the third contact to begin. restore the sun, slowly. At almost 4 p.m. local time, the eclipse, which covered 87 percent of the Sun, ended and we were able to recount an incredible triple set of astronomical delights. The dark southern sky, the comet and a great annular eclipse.
Seeing the many dozens of Moai has been incredible, along with other treasures of the island. We will continue exploring Easter Island for another day and a half and then return to Santiago, where we will have another eclipse, witness another bright comet and another session under the deep southern sky, which my old friend Bart Bok liked to see. say “it has everything good in it.”
What a whirlwind journey through the eclipse it has been so far! More to come. I hope you too have seen the eclipse, or at least some of the magnificent images recorded of this magical phenomenon!
David J. Eicher is editor of Astronomy magazine, author of 26 books on science and history, and member of the board of directors of the Starmus Festival and Lowell Observatory.
