The western United States recently witnessed a partial solar eclipse. I left the newsroom a little earlier than usual to visit a group of astronomers in front of Bashas’ who had set up telescopes, encouraging members of the public to catch a glimpse of the rare astronomical phenomenon.
Passersby were encouraged to gaze at the sun through darkly filtered glasses or through the telescopes, which filtered the sun from yellow to a rich red, allowing us to see giant solar flares, the height of three Earths, emerge like flame from a cigarette lighter.
Those who cast their eyes toward the sun also witnessed the giant Sunspot Region 2192, the largest group of sunspots in the last 24 years. A sunspot is a relatively cooler part of the sun, at temperatures of 3,000 degrees Kelvin [or 4,940 degrees Fahrenheit] rather than the average temperature of the sun, which is 5,780 K [9,944.33 F].
Eclipses have been seen as terrifying events. In Norse mythology, after the death of the gods at the battle of Ragnarök, the warg Sköll, son of Fenrir, would swallow the sun and plunge the world into darkness, leaving the Earth to freeze over.
Like the transit of Venus, lunar eclipses and regular passing of comets, solar eclipses connect us to our species’ recorded history. Such rare occurrences are documented through the centuries by astronomers, clergy and kings and have shaped our understanding of the universe around us.
The first eclipse recorded in history occurred May 3, 1375 B.C., and was written about in Ugarit, a Canaanite city state on the coast of what is now Syria.
The 1948 discovery of a stele about the eclipse has been used by archaeologists to date events in other ancient texts by using the eclipse as a measuring tool.
Likewise an eclipse that occurred June 15, 762 B.C., is mentioned in both Assyrian texts, which are easily linked to historical events, and the more chronologically ambiguous Hebrew Bible, allowing biblical scholars to date events in the reign of Jeroboam II, who appears in 2 Kings.
Biblical scholars also have linked a solar eclipse to the crucifixion of Jesus. There was a total solar eclipse for one minute 59 seconds on Nov. 24, A.D. 29, and another for four minutes and six seconds on April 3, A.D. 33. However, Passover only occurs on the full moon after the northern vernal equinox, not the new moon, when solar eclipses occur, making the connection somewhat tenuous and further obscuring the actual date of the event.
For the modern world, the most important eclipse occurred May 29, 1919. British astronomer Arthur Eddington used that eclipse of the sun to take measurements of the position of stars around the edge, which were made visible as the moon blocked most of the sun’s light. Comparing these positions with previous measurements, Eddington demonstrated that the massive gravitational pull of the sun bent light around it, supporting that the theory of relativity, written in 1911 by a little-known German physicist named Albert Einstein, was true.
The Times newspaper printed the headline: “Revolution in Science — New Theory of the Universe — Newtonian Ideas Overthrown,” earning Eddington a knighthood and catapulting Einstein from obscurity to celebrity status. Though relativity was still too controversial for the time, Einstein’s newfound fame earned him the Nobel Prize for another theory — the photoelectric effect — in 1921.
