Remembering a solar eclipse: It’s an unforgettable experience for the Colwells, and the kids of Oak Ridge, Maryland, who watched it happen
The people who chase solar eclipses around the world will tell you that seeing the moon interfere with the sun’s rays can be an unforgettable experience.
When he was just five years old, the Colwells saw a solar eclipse outside of their home in Tennessee. He said it was a decent, clear memory and not a “super-clear memory”. I remember it pretty well.”
Rick Fienberg, who is the project manager for the American Astronomical Society’s eclipse task force, says that he and his colleagues have encountered plenty of people who were profoundly affected by seeing the 2017 eclipse.
Fienberg says they have heard the stories over a cup of coffee. “And many of them have said, ‘Yeah, it changed my life. It has turned me into an eclipse chaser,’ or ‘It’s caused me to read endless astronomy books or to pay more attention to science news.'”
But that’s just anecdotal, he says. He is unaware of any data that shows the impact of the eclipse on the number of people going into science careers or the emotional impact of seeing the sun blacked out.
The little details, like getting to view the partial eclipse through a telescope or eating moon pies in the shape of partial eclipse phases, stuck out to Buckner’s students.
One of the students who attended Buckner’s eclipse-observing event is Kaylee Tress, who is now an 8th-grader at Robertsville Middle School in Oak Ridge.
Landon Davis was five years old when the eclipse happened, and remembers being on the playground and using eclipse glasses before the big event. “I don’t really remember that much,” he says.
The younger sister of Evelyn had to check with her older sister. “Aren’t we with the neighbors?” she asked uncertainly. Her sister confirmed that yes, they’d gone to a blueberry farm with some neighbors.
Seeing an eclipse: What happened to Chase Stanek and his brother Jayden, the other day, and how it made him interested in meteorology
His brother Jayden, who is a few years older, also remembers wearing eclipse glasses. He says he remembers hearing crickets at the peak of darkness.
She thinks it was so bad that it made her brain stop working. She thinks that the eclipse experience was really cool and strange. And I do know that after that, I really was starting to think about what exists in the universe that we can’t see.”
“I don’t think it changed my life path or anything,” says Chase Stanek, who is a junior at high school in Wisconsin.
Alex Shulze, who was nine at the time he saw the eclipse, says it’s his top memory because it isn’t a common event. “It was something really un-normal. It was fun. It was very different. It’s not something that I’d ever, obviously, seen. I was happy to actually experience it and see what happened.
He’d already been paying attention to the power of storms before the eclipse, so it’s possible it influenced him to become interested in meteorology.
“It’s not something you see every day, obviously. So it just kind of brought the perspective of like there’s more out there than you see every day, every year, you know?” says Breiwa. ” It expanded the perspective on everything, it just kind of did that.”
The teacher who organized the eclipse field trip for Brewa and others says that maybe younger people are more influenced by an eclipse than older people.
Eventually, she decided to become a physicist. So even though her childhood self wouldn’t have described seeing the eclipse as a transformative event, she suspects it had some kind of impact on the course of her life.