It was a great weekend, though. The hubs signed up to ride in the Santa Fe Century bike ride - he and some coworkers opted for the half-century ride - for those unfamiliar, a century bike ride is 100 miles - the half century is, well, half that: 50 miles. We decided to just make a weekend out of it, and drove up to stay in Santa Fe on Friday evening. I'll tell more about the weekend in another post, though - in part because I'm not quite ready to let go of it yet - and in part because I wanna talk about solar eclipses!
So, I think today's eclipse provides a perfect opportunity to stir some science and faith together.
First, annular solar eclipses. This evening's annular solar eclipse was the first visible in the United States since 1994 - and we New Mexicans got a lucky front-row seat - Albuquerque happened to be one of the best places to view the eclipse. You've probably heard or read enough about the eclipse to know that this evening, the Moon passed in between the Sun and the Earth, casting a shadow on the earth, making 7:00-ish seem a lot more like 9:00! Since it was an annular eclipse, at the high point, the sun appeared to be a ring (annulus) of fire around the moon. Way cool.
If you want to read a nice, more detailed description of why eclipses happen, and why they happen when they do, UNM's Physics and Astronomy Department has a great page about today's eclipse, and the astronomy behind it, here. Hopefully they'll add some photos at some point, as they had a great live video feed from a telescope during the eclipse today. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I didn't manage to get a solar filter for my camera, so I wasn't able to actually photograph the "ring of fire" - but I did make a little pinhole camera, so we watched the eclipse with that - and UNM's live telescope feed.
OK, the faith part. Most Catholics in the US, celebrated the Solemnity of the Ascension today (though there are a few dioceses that still observe this feast on its traditional Thursday). What happened at the Ascension? The disciples watched as Jesus ascended into heaven... and thus, disappeared from their sight. We could go down several paths in discussing Jesus disappearing from our sight, and how we've experienced something like that in our lives, but I'd rather take a slightly different approach tonight.
How cool is it that the annular solar eclipse and the feast of the Ascension coincided this year?
I think, very cool. As the Son of God disappeared from the disciples' sight at his ascension, so today the Sun disappeared from our sight. But not entirely... in either case. Though Jesus ascended and was no longer physically visible to the disciples, he still left his light here on earth - in his presence in the Eucharist, and through the Holy Spirit. No, it's not the same as if he were still present to all of us in his human form, walking among us, but his light still illumines our path. Kind of like an annular solar eclipse... it's not quite as light outside as it is when the Moon isn't in front of the Sun - but there is still plenty of light for us to see by.
Kinda cool when science and faith can meet up in one place, isn't it?
No pics of the eclipse to share... :-(
So I'll put in a flower pic instead - we were in the garden at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis in Santa Fe yesterday afternoon, and the flower known as "bleeding heart" was blooming. I couldn't help but think how appropriate it is to have such a flower planted in that garden, where there are also large, sculpted Stations of the Cross - all in all, a remembrance of the heart of Christ...
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