Eclipse — Journeys to the Dark Side of the Moon by Frank Close

Author:Frank Close [Close, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2017-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 6A. Eclipse goggles in Zambia. (photo: Frank Close).

The boss started an oration in the local dialect, which went on for some time. This was because some of his audience kept interrupting. During these interventions they waved their arms and appeared to argue. After an interminable time everyone seemed satisfied, and it was my turn. But first I asked the boss what had happened so far.

He told me that some of his workers initially refused to take part. They wanted to stay indoors, afraid that evil spirits would be released during the eclipse. Three of the men asked to return to their families in the village, several miles away, so that they would be present if the spirits of dead ancestors returned to their homes when the sun was taken from the sky. The boss had told them that there was nothing to worry about; that the stories about evil spirits, disasters and mayhem were rumours put about by bad people. Their families would be safe, he assured them. He added that they would be safe too, more so on the island than in the bush-camp. And he could promise this to be true because in the camp they had ‘a man who has seen many total eclipses, a man of knowledge who will now explain everything about what will happen and why you have nothing to fear’.

No pressure there, then! My ‘many’ eclipses amounted to just one, and that had been beneath cloud. There would be no danger of that on this occasion as we had not seen a single cloud all week.

I was now due to explain the eclipse to an expectant audience. My mind went back to that demonstration in my childhood, now 47 years in the past. I had no football, cricket ball, or lantern, however, and the bright natural sunlight of Africa was far from the sombre theatre of St Mark’s School, Peterborough. So, instead, I adopted the style of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, in which one uses the audience for the demonstrations. The camp’s owner played the role of the sun, I was the moon, and two of the staff played the earthlings. One of them pretended to be an observer in Lusaka, while another represented the camp where we were. I walked slowly between them and the boss, illustrating how the moving moon would in turn block the view of the sun from each of them. They all agreed that they understood, so we moved to the next lesson: how to look at the sun through their goggles.

I put mine on, and held one earpiece gently in my fingers as insurance lest a puff of breeze disturb the spectacles while I looked at the sun. Then I looked up until I found a circular bright globe, a white dot in the middle of my vision. They each did this for themselves. The boss emphasised how important it is to use the goggles, and to hold them securely. I explained that this would

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