Editor’s note: The only total solar eclipse of 2021 occurred Saturday, Dec. 4, over Antarctica, where few people could see it. Some intrepid explorers, like our columnist Joe Rao, attempted to see the eclipse from cruise ships near Antarctica. Here’s what Joe and his ship saw.
FROM THE LE COMMANDANT CHARCOT IN THE SOUTHERN OCEAN OFF OF ANTARCTICA — Approximately 200 passengers on board this exploration cruise ship, owned by the French cruise line, Ponant, sadly suffered a complete cloud out of this total solar eclipse, which swept across a part of the frozen Antarctic continent on Saturday.
Late Friday evening, Captain Etienne Garcia, Master of the Le Commandant Charcot, reversed the course of the ship. It had been previously heading on a southeast trajectory just to the east of the center-line of the eclipse track, but based on a check of satellite imagery, Captain Garcia decided to turn and head on a northwest trajectory and maneuver the ship closer to the eclipse center line. The satellite images had shown a more-or-less general cloud cover, but the search was on for some thin spots which might have provided some partial visibility.
A view from the stern of Le Commandant Charcot looking up toward the ship’s bridge under overcast skies prior to the start of the total solar eclipse of 2021. (Image credit: Joe Rao)
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Unfortunately, during the overnight hours as the temperatures cooled the overcast only became thicker. And the passengers and crew who gathered at the stern of the ship after 3 a.m. (“Chilean Summer Time”) only saw gray skies.
At the time it encountered the moon’s dark umbral shadow, the 30,000-ton exploration vessel was located near 57.72 degrees south and 44.02 degrees west, to the northeast of the South Orkney Islands. About 20 minutes before second contact, the start of the total phase of the eclipse, passengers began to notice a subtle diminution of the light levels and it really began accelerating toward darkening in the final couple of minutes before totality as the moon’s shadow raced toward us from the northeast at 3,100 mph.
The moment of totality of the total solar eclipse of 2021 from the deck of the Le Commandant Charcot in the sea near the coast of Antarctica on Dec. 4, 2021. The sky was clouded out, but is considerably darker and lights can be seen shining on the ship’s bridge. (Image credit: Joe Rao)
A number of petrels — tube-nosed seabirds indiginous to this part of the world —were flying and swooping around the ship as the darkness was coming on and we also caught sight of two whales that breached the sea surface alongside our ship. Whether they were all reacting to the darkening sky is debatable, but certainly a possibility.
Totality lasted 97 seconds. No distinct shadow or cone of darkness was noted. Rather, just an amorphous darkening of the sky — like someone turning down a rheostat or dimmer switch. No colors were seen and the end of totality seemed more pronounced as the light seemed to come back quicker than it when it faded away.
During totality, it actually began to drizzle very lightly and a few minutes after third contact it actually started to snow lightly. The air temperature hovered at around 0C (32F), but factoring in the winds made it feel noticeably colder.
Captain Etienne Garcia, Master of the Le Commandant Charcot, making last-minute course corrections in an attempt to locate a break in the clouds for a view of the total eclipse. (Image credit: Joe Rao)
Well … we gave it our best shot, but unfortunately came up empty. Those who had never experienced a total solar eclipse, were impressed by the dramatic darkening of the sky, but for those like myself, who knew what was hidden from our view behind the cloud deck, it was quite disappointing.
I knew when I accepted this assignment to work with Captain Garcia and his staff, that the weather odds were long for success based on long-term climate records for this part of the world. It is nonetheless hard to take, considering how brilliantly sunny our skies were in the two days prior to the eclipse.
This was eclipse number 13 for me . . . the very first dating back to July 1972; only my second cloud-out (the first was 44 years ago in Colombia, October 1977). My batting average for eclipse success is 84.7%, so I really have little to complain about — but a bitter defeat nonetheless.
On a bright note, with today’s 97 seconds, I have now spent over 30 minutes “basking” in the shadow of the moon.
Back in 1973, I was at a gathering of eclipse chasers at the Hayden Planetarium where Dr. Charles Hugh Smiley of Brown University was attending. The Director at Hayden, Mark Chartrand said that Dr. Smiley had spent more than 30 minutes in the Moon’s umbra, “An unprecedented total!” gushed Dr. Chartrand. I thought to myself at that time that I would never come remotely close to Dr. Smiley’s record, but with today’s eclipse I have.
Dr. Smiley (who passed away in 1977), ended his career having observed 14 eclipses. Today, many veteran eclipse chasers have seen more than 20 total eclipses and a few individuals, such as solar physicist, Dr. Jay Pasachoff of Williams College in Massachusetts and Dr. Glenn Schneider of the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, have seen more than 30!
Sadly ironic that on the day before the eclipse, the skies were brilliantly sunny. Here is Renate Rao (my wife), enjoying the cold Antarctic sunshine. Note the large iceberg in the Southern Ocean behind her. (Image credit: Joe Rao)
At least one cruise ship did get a view of the totally eclipsed sun. Word reached us that National Geographic’s ship “Endurance” managed to sight the sun’s corona between clouds at a position near the beginning of today’s totality path. There were also chartered flights that took observers about 33,000-feet above the cloud cover for airborne views of this morning’s celestial spectacle.
In all, it is estimated that fewer than 3000 people attended observation of today’s total eclipse.
Another member of the Ponant cruise ships, the Le Boreal, passed our ship on its way north to position itself along the totality path. A wayward petral photobombed it in this view. (Image credit: Joe Rao)
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The next total eclipse on April 20, 2023, will actually be an unusual annular-total, or “hybrid” eclipse, in which along part of the eclipse path an annular or ring eclipse is seen, while along other parts of the eclipse path the eclipse is total. Most eclipse watchers are likely to converge on Cape Range National Park in Western Australia, where totality will last for 62 seconds.
On April 8, 2024, a total eclipse will cross parts of Northern Mexico and the Southern and Eastern United States and Eastern Canada. About 35 million people live in the totality path of this eclipse with the total phase in some cases exceeding 4 minutes.
Editor’s Note: If you snap an amazing solar eclipse photo and would like to share it with Space.com’s readers, send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
The European Space Agency is fast-tracking a new mission called Ramses, which will fly to near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis and join the space rock in 2029 when it comes very close to our planet — closer even than the region where geosynchronous satellites sit.
Ramses is short for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety and, as its name suggests, is the next phase in humanity’s efforts to learn more about near-Earth asteroids (NEOs) and how we might deflect them should one ever be discovered on a collision course with planet Earth.
In order to launch in time to rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, scientists at the European Space Agency have been given permission to start planning Ramses even before the multinational space agency officially adopts the mission. The sanctioning and appropriation of funding for the Ramses mission will hopefully take place at ESA’s Ministerial Council meeting (involving representatives from each of ESA’s member states) in November of 2025. To arrive at Apophis in February 2029, launch would have to take place in April 2028, the agency says.
This is a big deal because large asteroids don’t come this close to Earth very often. It is thus scientifically precious that, on April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass within 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers) of Earth. For comparison, geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth’s surface. Such close fly-bys by asteroids hundreds of meters across (Apophis is about 1,230 feet, or 375 meters, across) only occur on average once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Miss this one, and we’ve got a long time to wait for the next.
When Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was for a short time the most dangerous asteroid known, being classified as having the potential to impact with Earth possibly in 2029, 2036, or 2068. Should an asteroid of its size strike Earth, it could gouge out a crater several kilometers across and devastate a country with shock waves, flash heating and earth tremors. If it crashed down in the ocean, it could send a towering tsunami to devastate coastlines in multiple countries.
Over time, as our knowledge of Apophis’ orbit became more refined, however, the risk of impact greatly went down. Radar observations of the asteroid in March of 2021 reduced the uncertainty in Apophis’ orbit from hundreds of kilometers to just a few kilometers, finally removing any lingering worries about an impact — at least for the next 100 years. (Beyond 100 years, asteroid orbits can become too unpredictable to plot with any accuracy, but there’s currently no suggestion that an impact will occur after 100 years.) So, Earth is expected to be perfectly safe in 2029 when Apophis comes through. Still, scientists want to see how Apophis responds by coming so close to Earth and entering our planet’s gravitational field.
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“There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the solar system to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface,” said Patrick Michel, who is the Director of Research at CNRS at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, in a statement. “Nature is bringing one to us and conducting the experiment itself. All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface.”
The Goldstone radar’s imagery of asteroid 99942 Apophis as it made its closest approach to Earth, in March 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/NSF/AUI/GBO)
By arriving at Apophis before the asteroid’s close encounter with Earth, and sticking with it throughout the flyby and beyond, Ramses will be in prime position to conduct before-and-after surveys to see how Apophis reacts to Earth. By looking for disturbances Earth’s gravitational tidal forces trigger on the asteroid’s surface, Ramses will be able to learn about Apophis’ internal structure, density, porosity and composition, all of which are characteristics that we would need to first understand before considering how best to deflect a similar asteroid were one ever found to be on a collision course with our world.
Besides assisting in protecting Earth, learning about Apophis will give scientists further insights into how similar asteroids formed in the early solar system, and, in the process, how planets (including Earth) formed out of the same material.
One way we already know Earth will affect Apophis is by changing its orbit. Currently, Apophis is categorized as an Aten-type asteroid, which is what we call the class of near-Earth objects that have a shorter orbit around the sun than Earth does. Apophis currently gets as far as 0.92 astronomical units (137.6 million km, or 85.5 million miles) from the sun. However, our planet will give Apophis a gravitational nudge that will enlarge its orbit to 1.1 astronomical units (164.6 million km, or 102 million miles), such that its orbital period becomes longer than Earth’s.
It will then be classed as an Apollo-type asteroid.
Ramses won’t be alone in tracking Apophis. NASA has repurposed their OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned a sample from another near-Earth asteroid, 101955 Bennu, in 2023. However, the spacecraft, renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer), won’t arrive at the asteroid until April 23, 2029, ten days after the close encounter with Earth. OSIRIS-APEX will initially perform a flyby of Apophis at a distance of about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from the object, then return in June that year to settle into orbit around Apophis for an 18-month mission.
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Furthermore, the European Space Agency still plans on launching its Hera spacecraft in October 2024 to follow-up on the DART mission to the double asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos. DART impacted the latter in a test of kinetic impactor capabilities for potentially changing a hazardous asteroid’s orbit around our planet. Hera will survey the binary asteroid system and observe the crater made by DART’s sacrifice to gain a better understanding of Dimorphos’ structure and composition post-impact, so that we can place the results in context.
The more near-Earth asteroids like Dimorphos and Apophis that we study, the greater that context becomes. Perhaps, one day, the understanding that we have gained from these missions will indeed save our planet.
