At its peak moments in Ottawa, 98.9 per cent of the sun will be hidden behind the moon. However, Brockville, Kingston, Cornwall and Montreal will have a 100 per cent eclipse.
Dave Chisholm has waited a lifetime for April 8, 2024.
He’s over the moon about the opportunity to see the mid-afternoon daylight transformed into a twilight-like spectacle. It’s a chance to see a total solar eclipse, a celestial phenomenon involving the symmetry of earth, sun and moon.
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“It’s very rare,” says Chisholm, president of the Ottawa Chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. “The moon and the sun have to align perfectly for it to happen.”
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The entire process of the moon gradually moving past the sun, casting a shadow on Earth, will take two hours and 21 minutes. At its peak moments in Ottawa, between 3:25 p.m. and 3:27 p.m., 98.9 per cent of the sun will be hidden behind the moon.
However, in Brockville, Kingston, Cornwall, Montreal and other spots along the St. Lawrence Seaway, which are in the “path of totality,” it will be a 100 per cent eclipse.
The vastness of space and the science of orbiting planets can be overwhelming to grasp — for example, the sun is 147.67 million kilometres from earth — even for those who study and teach astrophysics and cosmology.
“It’s absolutely fascinating,” Carleton University theoretical particle physics professor Yue Zhang said. “(The solar eclipse) is like a miracle.”
Total solar eclipses don’t happen often.
The last such magic moment witnessed near Ottawa came in 1979. None of us will be around for the next one in these parts, in 2205. But, if you’re still kicking 120 years from now, you might be lucky to catch another glimpse of a total eclipse in Toronto.
So, what exactly is a total solar eclipse?
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A full eclipse occurs when the moon and sun are in complete direct line of each other from a specific location on earth.
“The size of the circle of the moon is basically the same size as the sun,” Chisholm said. “So, it will completely block the sun.”
While the earth orbits the sun and the moon orbits the earth, an eclipse occurs because the moon’s path is not a perfect circle and intersects with the ecliptic path of the sun.
“It’s called a node,” Zhang said. “The students are very excited about it happening.”
In Ottawa, the process will begin at 2:11 p.m., with the skies becoming more and more shaded towards the peak between 3:25 and 3:27 p.m.
Contrary to widely held belief, we will not be thrust into absolute blackness.
At prime eclipse time, the moon will appear as a giant black hole in the sky, ringed by a crown of light — the sun’s corona — shining behind it.
“It’s not totally dark, because the sun will be shining out around the (edges of the) moon,” Chisholm said. “So it’s still lighting up. It gets darker, but not ever totally black. Sort of like a dusk. The animals will react to it.”
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After that, the sun will start re-appearing, piece by piece, until 4:35 p.m., when the edge of the moon completely leaves the edge of the sun.
Annular (or partial) solar eclipses are more common. The last notable one in Ottawa came last Oct. 14. On Aug. 21, 2017, parts of North America also experienced a 60-70 per cent eclipse. That event was particularly noteworthy when former U.S. president Donald Trump was photographed staring directly at it against all safety advice.
Why will the moon appear larger than normal?
On April 7, the moon will make its closest approach to Earth during the month, at a distance of some 360,000 kilometres. (Due to the fact the moon doesn’t travel in a perfect circle, it can be, at times, as far as 400,000 kilometres away).
Additionally, the sun is also currently experiencing a period of hyper-activity. Those armed with state-of-the-art telescopes will be able can see solar flares from the corona.
What path will the eclipse take?
It will begin in the Pacific Ocean and be on display throughout much of North America as the day goes on.
The eclipse will migrate into Texas from Mexico and follow a northeasterly arc up through the United States. In Canada, the eclipse will first appear in southern Ontario, continuing on a path that will take it slightly south of Toronto and along a path over Kingston, Brockville and Cornwall. The path of totality will straddle Canada and the U.S., over the St. Lawrence River.
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It will continue on to Quebec and the East Coast.
Where is the best place to see the eclipse?
Ideal spots are as close as an hour away from downtown Ottawa.
Kingston will experience the total eclipse between 3:22 and 3:25, followed by Brockville between 3:23 and 3:26. It moves on to Cornwall from 3:24 to 3:27.
In Kingston, a viewing party has been planned for Kingston’s Fort Henry. Brockville’s Blockhouse Island and Cornwall’s Lamoureux and Guindon Parks are also seen as prime locations to see it all unfold.
Chisholm plans to take in the show in Kingston and he encourages anyone planning on checking it out not to wait until the last minute.
“Most of the astronomers in Ottawa won’t be in Ottawa,” he said. “And you don’t want to go down on the day of the eclipse. If you do, you’re going to miss it. The traffic is going to be too heavy.”
All of the above, is, of course, conditional on having clear skies.
If you look at the past, it’s not promising. The history of April 8 weather shows that cloudy conditions have existed 75 per cent of the time in Ottawa and 65 per cent in Kingston.
The astronomy community will employ “eclipse chasers,” keeping everyone abreast of where skies are brightest.
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“Some people chase tornadoes, others chase eclipses,” Chisholm joked. “A couple of astronomers from here are going down to the United States.”
At Carleton University, the show will take place atop the Physics building, with telescopes set up for students to use.
What eye protection is necessary?
The only time when it is safe to stare directly at an eclipse is in the peak moment when the moon is covering the sun.
For the other two-plus hours, the eyes must be covered or the eclipse must be seen through a filter.
The risk is burning the back of your eyes.
“Staring at the sun without protection may cause damage to your retina (the tissue at the back of your eye) called solar retinopathy,” Canadian Association of Optometrists president Dr. Martin Spiro said in a statement released in October. “This damage can occur without any sensation of pain.”
There are different types of eclipse glasses on the market — ranging everywhere from $2 cardboard models to the $30 wraparound plastic type — but they are in short supply.
The CAO and the Canadian Space Agency are advising everyone to be vigilant in what they purchase.
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Any eyewear must pass the international standard ISO 12312-2.
Sunglasses, no matter how expensive, do not provide enough coverage. Cameras and telescopes without proper solar filters are not safe, either.
Chisholm cautions that some older telescopes contain an eyepiece with the word “sun” on it. It is not safe to point it directly at the sun.
“That’s very dangerous,” he said. “The intense sunlight comes in and heats up that piece of plastic and it melts and cracks and it can blind someone instantly.”
Spiro pointed out that adults pay special attention to make their children aware.
“Children, being naturally curious, may need extra supervision during eclipses,” he said.
Can you make a homemade device to see the eclipse?
Yes. All you need to make a “pinhole projector” is an empty cereal box, a piece of white paper and a piece of tin foil.
Chisholm will be visiting schools during the next few weeks, illustrating how students can build their own.
First, you cut off half of the top end of the box and insert the paper at the bottom of the box. Cover the remaining piece of the top of the box with tin foil and make a tiny hole in the tin foil.
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To see the eclipse safely, point the box towards the ground in the opposite direction of the sun.
“It’s not super high tech and the image of the sun is very, very small but you can actually see a picture and can see the moon moving across the sun,” Chisholm said. “It’s a safe way to look at the sun because you are looking at a reflection.”
Why are school boards making April 8 a PA day?
The biggest issue is the timing of the eclipse over Ottawa.
It will occur at the same time as children normally walk or take the bus home from school.
The concern is that students might not heed previous advice to not look up.
Accordingly, the Ottawa Catholic School Board, the Conseil des écoles catholiques du Centre-Est and the Conseil des écoles publiques du l’Est de l’Ontario are closing their doors. They’ve made April 8 a PA Day, moving it from the previous April 26 date.
“Looking directly at the sun during an eclipse can cause damage to one’s eyes,” the OCSB said in a statement.
The Ottawa Carleton District School Board also opted to close schools, reinforcing the message that normal school dismissal times come during the “window” of the eclipse and that staring at the sun without proper eye protection could result in permanent eye damage. The Board doesn’t have a PA Day that can be moved. The OCDSB Toddler Preschool and EarlyOn Child and Family Centres will operate as usual on April 8.
kwarren@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/Citizenkwarren
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More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it — an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts.
That’s enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once. If it was concentrated just on the state of North Carolina that much water would be 3.5 feet deep (more than 1 meter). It’s enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools.
“That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.”
The flood damage from the rain is apocalyptic, meteorologists said. More than 100 people are dead, according to officials.
Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated the amount of rain, using precipitation measurements made in 2.5-mile-by-2.5 mile grids as measured by satellites and ground observations. He came up with 40 trillion gallons through Sunday for the eastern United States, with 20 trillion gallons of that hitting just Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida from Hurricane Helene.
Clark did the calculations independently and said the 40 trillion gallon figure (151 trillion liters) is about right and, if anything, conservative. Maue said maybe 1 to 2 trillion more gallons of rain had fallen, much if it in Virginia, since his calculations.
Clark, who spends much of his work on issues of shrinking western water supplies, said to put the amount of rain in perspective, it’s more than twice the combined amount of water stored by two key Colorado River basin reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Several meteorologists said this was a combination of two, maybe three storm systems. Before Helene struck, rain had fallen heavily for days because a low pressure system had “cut off” from the jet stream — which moves weather systems along west to east — and stalled over the Southeast. That funneled plenty of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. And a storm that fell just short of named status parked along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast, dumping as much as 20 inches of rain, said North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello.
Then add Helene, one of the largest storms in the last couple decades and one that held plenty of rain because it was young and moved fast before it hit the Appalachians, said University of Albany hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero.
“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms that that led to the enormous amount of rain,” Maue said. “That collected at high elevation, we’re talking 3,000 to 6000 feet. And when you drop trillions of gallons on a mountain, that has to go down.”
The fact that these storms hit the mountains made everything worse, and not just because of runoff. The interaction between the mountains and the storm systems wrings more moisture out of the air, Clark, Maue and Corbosiero said.
North Carolina weather officials said their top measurement total was 31.33 inches in the tiny town of Busick. Mount Mitchell also got more than 2 feet of rainfall.
Before 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, “I said to our colleagues, you know, I never thought in my career that we would measure rainfall in feet,” Clark said. “And after Harvey, Florence, the more isolated events in eastern Kentucky, portions of South Dakota. We’re seeing events year in and year out where we are measuring rainfall in feet.”
Storms are getting wetter as the climate change s, said Corbosiero and Dello. A basic law of physics says the air holds nearly 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit warmer (7% for every degree Celsius) and the world has warmed more than 2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times.
Corbosiero said meteorologists are vigorously debating how much of Helene is due to worsening climate change and how much is random.
For Dello, the “fingerprints of climate change” were clear.
“We’ve seen tropical storm impacts in western North Carolina. But these storms are wetter and these storms are warmer. And there would have been a time when a tropical storm would have been heading toward North Carolina and would have caused some rain and some damage, but not apocalyptic destruction. ”
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Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate
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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
It’s a dinosaur that roamed Alberta’s badlands more than 70 million years ago, sporting a big, bumpy, bony head the size of a baby elephant.
On Wednesday, paleontologists near Grande Prairie pulled its 272-kilogram skull from the ground.
They call it “Big Sam.”
The adult Pachyrhinosaurus is the second plant-eating dinosaur to be unearthed from a dense bonebed belonging to a herd that died together on the edge of a valley that now sits 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
It didn’t die alone.
“We have hundreds of juvenile bones in the bonebed, so we know that there are many babies and some adults among all of the big adults,” Emily Bamforth, a paleontologist with the nearby Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said in an interview on the way to the dig site.
She described the horned Pachyrhinosaurus as “the smaller, older cousin of the triceratops.”
“This species of dinosaur is endemic to the Grand Prairie area, so it’s found here and nowhere else in the world. They are … kind of about the size of an Indian elephant and a rhino,” she added.
The head alone, she said, is about the size of a baby elephant.
The discovery was a long time coming.
The bonebed was first discovered by a high school teacher out for a walk about 50 years ago. It took the teacher a decade to get anyone from southern Alberta to come to take a look.
“At the time, sort of in the ’70s and ’80s, paleontology in northern Alberta was virtually unknown,” said Bamforth.
When paleontogists eventually got to the site, Bamforth said, they learned “it’s actually one of the densest dinosaur bonebeds in North America.”
“It contains about 100 to 300 bones per square metre,” she said.
Paleontologists have been at the site sporadically ever since, combing through bones belonging to turtles, dinosaurs and lizards. Sixteen years ago, they discovered a large skull of an approximately 30-year-old Pachyrhinosaurus, which is now at the museum.
About a year ago, they found the second adult: Big Sam.
Bamforth said both dinosaurs are believed to have been the elders in the herd.
“Their distinguishing feature is that, instead of having a horn on their nose like a triceratops, they had this big, bony bump called a boss. And they have big, bony bumps over their eyes as well,” she said.
“It makes them look a little strange. It’s the one dinosaur that if you find it, it’s the only possible thing it can be.”
The genders of the two adults are unknown.
Bamforth said the extraction was difficult because Big Sam was intertwined in a cluster of about 300 other bones.
The skull was found upside down, “as if the animal was lying on its back,” but was well preserved, she said.
She said the excavation process involved putting plaster on the skull and wooden planks around if for stability. From there, it was lifted out — very carefully — with a crane, and was to be shipped on a trolley to the museum for study.
“I have extracted skulls in the past. This is probably the biggest one I’ve ever done though,” said Bamforth.
“It’s pretty exciting.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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.”
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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