It was 25 years ago when Kate Russo saw her very first total solar eclipse.
The Australian psychologist was living in Northern Ireland at the time and had always wanted to witness the spectacle in person.
She was in between her Masters and PhD studies in her 20s when, in 1999, the path of totality happened to cross nearby over the southern coast of France.
“I thought it was going to be just my first – my only – experience of an eclipse,” Ms Russo said. “Something you haven’t experienced and then you do and you’re like, ‘that’s pretty cool.'”
Instead, what she saw that day changed her life forever, sparking a life-long journey of studying and chasing solar eclipses around the globe.
On Monday, Ms Russo will watch her 14th total solar eclipse, this time in Uvalde, Texas. She is one of many eclipse chasers who have arrived in North America in recent days.
Experts estimate that more than a million people from inside and outside North America will travel towards the path of totality.
Many are individuals who have combined their love of astronomy, exploration, science and travel into a mission to see as many eclipses in their lifetime as possible.
Some are driven by their love of space and desire to understand the universe around them. Others, like Ms Russo, pursue the indescribable feeling that comes with seeing a total solar eclipse in person.
The 51-year-old recalled how standing in the shadow of the moon for the first time was an “immersive and emotional” experience.
A total solar eclipse, by definition, occurs when the moon’s shadow covers the sun’s rays entirely, plunging those in the shadow’s path into darkness for a few minutes.
But Ms Russo said experiencing it was much more than that.
She described feeling a drop in temperature and the wind picking up around her, as if a storm was approaching. She also noticed the colours of her surroundings being drained in the absence of the sun’s rays, except for an orange, reddish glow around the horizon and a thin ring of light in the sky – also known as the corona.
“Moments before you’re looking at the sun,” she said of the moment the eclipse begins. “Now, there’s just a hole in the sky where the sun should be. It’s like everything is turned upside down.”
Ms Russo said the experience inspired her to study people’s emotional response to witnessing a total solar eclipse.
Almost always, she said, there is a predictable sequence in which people take in an eclipse: it begins with a sense of wrongness and primal fear, followed by a feeling of connectedness and insignificance. Then comes the euphoria, and the desire to repeat those feelings all over again.
Even those who are more scientifically minded, she noticed, can’t help but stare at an eclipse with awe.
“Regardless of culture or your language, people have that same experience and it makes them feel part of something greater.”
It is a feeling that David Makepeace, another eclipse chaser from Toronto, Canada, knows very well.
Mr Makepeace, 61, who is about to catch his 19th solar eclipse, said the experience evokes existential questions for him.
“How could we possibly live in a solar system that is that beautiful? That has that much of an emotional punch to it?” he’s wondered. “How could that possibly be?”
Paul Maley, a 76-year-old retired data analyst and flight control specialist who worked at NASA for 41 years, said the desire to chase an eclipse is akin to an addiction of sorts.
“Once you get to see something that is this unique, you want more of it,” he said.
Patrick Poitevin
Mr Maley, who lives in Arizona, has seen 83 eclipses since 1970 – including annular, partial and total solar eclipses – across 42 countries.
His love of chasing them inspired him to launch a tourism company which takes dozens of people on trips to see eclipses around the world. Some of his guests are seasoned, he said. Others are catching their very first eclipse.
To mark the 8 April event, Mr Maley launched a boat cruise off the coast of Cabo San Lucas in Mexico with nearly 200 passengers.
Being on the water gives him mobility should the cloud cover change, he said, offering him the best possible chance of capturing a spectacular eclipse.
Also en route to Mexico is British eclipse chaser and retired material scientist Patrick Poitevin, who is on a quest to catch his 26th total solar eclipse.
Mr Poitevin, who lives in Derbyshire, said he often tries to combine his love of scientific innovation and astronomy when chasing eclipses – challenging himself with different projects or views for each one he catches.
But for this upcoming eclipse, he said he intends to sit back and watch with only a pair of binoculars in hand.
Mr Poitevin noted how this particular eclipse is slated to last four and a half minutes in Mexico. This, he said, will give him and others the chance to take in the view – maybe spot a few planets, stars, and even a comet.
For those catching their first-ever solar eclipse this year, the seasoned chasers had one piece of advice: put away the camera and enjoy the moment.
Fiddling with something, like a camera or a phone, lessens the experience, Mr Makepeace said.
“You’re busy with something else while the best thing in the world is happening over your head.”
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.
