Steal my sunshine

That was cool.

Like, legit, a top-5 life experience.


I don't really have anything profound or insightful about today's eclipse. My son is eight and like a lot of kids, he's interested in outer space. He knew the moons of Mars and was able to tell the planetarium director their names when he as five (until then, I didn't know Mars had moons*)

So when I heard several months ago about today's eclipse, I pretty much knew I was going to go. I could have planned to stay in town where the moon was going to eclipse 96% of the sun, but.... but if I drove 100 miles, I could get in the path of totality and experience a total eclipse.

So we decided to go. Unfortunately, last week my wife learned she wasn't going to be able to go with us. Se's usually the planner of our events. All I knew was I wanted to see a total eclipse, but beyond that, I didn't know what places were holding events or anything. She'd mentioned South Carolina State University was hosting an event and I figured what better place to go see this than an institution of higher learning.

I picked up my son from school about 11:15 and we set out on the roughly two-hour trip. My son wasn't all that talkative at the beginning, but as we got closer and closer, he started talking more and more. The eclipse began at 1:08 local time and we pulled in the parking lot about 1:15. We got out and immediately put on our glasses and saw the first traces of the moon moving across the sun.

We walked over to the football stadium where all the festivities were happening. Along the way we saw people grilling out, others in lawn chairs and blankets. There were also lots of amateur astronomers with telescopes set up along the short walk. Once inside the stadium, we saw a balloon being lifted off to get above the clouds to collect data for scientists a lot smarter than I am.

After that, the SCSU marching band started playing and there was also a DJ there playing songs. It was a festive atmosphere with college kids, community members and people from all over the globe there. In addition to people from South Carolina and Georgia, there were people from Maryland, Washington, Jamaica and Germany all in little old Orangeburg, South Carolina for the eclipse.

So for about an hour my son and I sat there, looking up every now and again with our glasses to see the moon slowly move across the sun while we laughed at the college kids around us, enjoyed the music and waited. For the longest time, if you didn't know an eclipse was happening, you wouldn't have noticed anything different.

Finally, at around 2:20 you could tell something was starting to happen. It started to cool off a little and the sky started to get darker. There was someone (I assume an SCSU science professor) explaining things. The sky in the west started to get darker and through our glasses we could see the moon nearly completely in front of the sun.

As it inched its way across, we both left our glasses on, watching and anxiously waiting for what we were all there for. There was yelling and cheering and a palpable excitement as the moment neared.

Finally, at 2:43 p.m., the moon moved entirely across the sun and for two minutes. The cheering and screaming (of which I fully admit I was one) of excitement echoed throughout the stadium. We could take our protective glasses off and were able to see Venus and Jupiter as well as the corona around the sun. With 20 seconds remaining, we were told (ok, encouraged) to put our glasses back on so we didn't look in to the sun when the moon stopped totally blocking the sun.

And just like that, the sun's light started to come back. As soon as it did, the crowd cheered some more. Being there with so many other people made it a better experience. We stuck around for another 15 minutes or so, but my son was ready to go home and I couldn't blame him. We made it back in a little more than two hours.

I'd do a disservice if I didn't mention that SCSU did an outstanding job with the event. From the music to the information to providing eclipse glasses to those who needed them, it was a first-rate 


*The moons are Phobos and Demos.