web exclusive: Eclipse Chasing

by Brittany Perrine

It’s About the Journey, Not the Destination

After traveling almost 3,000 miles, George Eberts, his wife Sandy, George’s lifelong friend Tom O’Grady, and Tom’s brother Kevin, arrived at their destination: an open field of unpopulated crop lands about 20 miles outside of the small town of Aguazul, Colombia. It was a beautiful October day in 1977; the sky was a brilliant baby blue stuffed with fluffy clouds. They had come to see a total eclipse of the sun, a natural phenomenon that occurs when the moon passes between the sun and Earth and completely shields all light. They were lucky to arrive a few hours before the eclipse, because in order to witness true totality, they had to be in the narrow path of the moon’s shadow on the Earth. And they wouldn’t want to miss any part of it: It’s a rare event that only happens up to twice a year around the globe, and some years not at all.

The four travelers met several other astronomers staked out in the barren field. As the evening drew near, all of the astronomers and local villagers gathered, telescopes and cameras pointed toward the western horizon. Darkness crept across the land and everyone knew the eclipse was approaching. Then, the worst thing happened: A massive cloud cluster rolled in and blocked the sun, destroying all hope of seeing the magnificent display of a total eclipse. The crowd was devastated. They could do nothing but pack up their gear and return to the village of Aguazul, wondering when their next chance would be to witness what they had come so far to see.

Becoming an eclipse-chaser

In high school, George Eberts was a science nerd. He had long had an interest in astronomy, and was especially attracted to the night sky. He considers himself a hard-wired night person, one who likes to stay up until the early hours of the morning to watch the sunrise, a trait that he believes pulled him toward the field of astronomy. During his teen years, the Soviet Union launched the first earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik, and the space race was underway. It was a time of widespread interest among the general public to learn and understand more about science and astronomy. Chemistry sets and telescopes became more available and affordable. Eberts remembers the excitement he felt when he got his first telescope for Christmas. He set it up in the back yard and from that point on was completely invested in learning and experiencing the wonders of astronomy.

Eberts met Tom O’Grady in Columbus when they were freshmen in high school. O’Grady had only a casual interest in astronomy until 1973 when he and Eberts took a three-month camping trip in Europe that changed their lives. They hitchhiked the continent and camped out every night, drinking wine and watching the stars. By the time they came home, Eberts had taught O’Grady everything he knew about the night sky.

Immediately after returning from the trip to Colombia in 1977, Eberts moved from Columbus to Athens to work with a medical microwave station at the Athens Mental Health Center (which was an OU-sponsored project in telemedicine and distance learning before the Internet was invented). As an OU staff member, he took advantage of the opportunity to attend grad school for free and started working on a master’s in organizational communication. Meanwhile, O’Grady was finishing up his bachelor’s degree at Ohio State. Eberts knew that O’Grady was interested in the environment and that there was a graduate program in environmental studies at OU. After little convincing, Tom moved to Athens and started grad school in the autumn of 1980.

Eberts pioneered a community stargazing class to get over his fear of public speaking so that he could be successful in his career of staff education. He borrowed some telescopes from the physics department and used them in his six-week stargazing classes. After about a year, Eberts got a call from the physics department. They wanted him to set up the telescopes and make them available for students to use. Soon after, the physics department offered him the chance to develop an introductory astronomy class. After teaching the course for a couple of years, the department wanted him to teach more nights. Having two young children, Eberts couldn’t take on the time commitment, but suggested they contact his old buddy O’Grady who knew the night sky as well as he did. Since then, the two men have co-taught the class now called Observational Astronomy Lab; Eberts teaches three nights and O’Grady teaches two.

First eclipse chase in Colombia

Prior to the trip to Colombia, Eberts had read an article in Sky and Telescope Magazine and learned that a group of astronomers was going to the village of Aguazul through a guided tour sponsored by Amateur Astronomers, Inc. AAI had leased out the village of Aguazul so the American travelers would have a place to stay. In return, the village would receive a substantial amount of money and educational support, including a brand new chemistry lab for the local school. The group was to fly into Bogota and take a one-day, air-conditioned bus ride over the mountains to Aguazul. But Eberts and O’Grady wanted to avoid paying thousands of dollars to join the Amateur Astronomer’s group so they found their own way there.

Eberts, Sandy, O’Grady and Kevin were beginning the adventure of a lifetime. It took five days to get to Aguazul once their plane landed in Barranquilla, a city on the northern coast of Colombia. As soon as they left the airport, culture shock set in. They were stunned by the impoverished living conditions in the industrialized city of Barranquilla. From the airport, they rode a rickety bus for four days, stopping in small cities along the way only to sleep. During the first leg of the trip, they traveled on paved roads along the coast, but not for long. The bus made a right-hand turn and traversed through the delta of the Magdalena River Valley. The air was thick, moist and clouded by mosquitoes. The bus jolted its passengers as it traversed the rugged, unpaved terrain. They journeyed deeper and deeper along the river, and neighboring towns got smaller, darker and poorer. Bare-footed children sat outside of shabby shacks with dirt floors while sweaty, scruffy men shot impenetrable glares at the passing bus. The four travelers grew less comfortable with their surroundings with every mile they traveled. After a grueling eight hours, the bus stopped in a small town where they found a cheap hotel for the night. It cost two dollars to stay there, which bought them each a cot to sleep on and access to a community bathroom down the hall.

The next morning they rode the bus into the jungle. Their apprehension intensified when every 30 miles the bus was required to stop at makeshift security checkpoints. Uniformed soldiers equipped with machine guns surrounded the bus and forced all of the men to exit. The men were patted down and fully searched for contraband before they were allowed to get back on the bus. “It didn’t make much sense to search only the men. As if the women, with all of their burlap sacks filled with stuff they were taking to market, couldn’t have hidden Uzis,” Eberts said, recalling the irony of the situation. At the end of the day, exhausted from the obstacles of riding through the jungle, the bus finally arrived in the town of Bucaramanga. They all felt a sense of relief when they arrived because it was located in the mountains, where children flying kites and women socializing in groups provided a more mellow and friendly atmosphere than anywhere they had seen so far.

The next two days the bus made its way through the mountain towns of Tunja and Sogamoso. They were comforted by the fairly clean and hospitable living conditions in the mountain towns, which were much more inviting than the guerilla-occupied towns of the jungle. Villagers stood waving and smiling at the passers-by. From Sogamoso, the bus took them all the way to their destination in the village of Aguazul. Looking back, Eberts realizes that it was a miracle that they arrived in time for the eclipse, considering their lack of an itinerary. They arrived around noon, and the eclipse was estimated to occur around 5 p.m. When they finally got there, they ran into the group of about thirty astronomers on the trip with Amateur Astronomers, Inc. “They looked at us like we were backwoods hippies–the kind of people they didn’t really want to associate with,” said Eberts. “We were exhausted from traveling for days. Our clothes were grimy and foul-smelling. All of us had hair past our shoulders, which was ratty and unkempt at that point. We didn’t have the luxury of showering like the AAI folks did.” Clean shaven or unkempt, they all saw the same thing: nothing.

After the eclipse proved to be a letdown, the four managed to catch a ride with the astronomers on the bus back into town. They were disappointed about the eclipse, but realized there was so much more to see, do and learn while in Colombia. They continued their journey throughout the country, hiking and camping for more than two months.

The adventures continue

Eberts and O’Grady continued to teach astronomy at OU, watching and waiting for their next opportunity to chase an eclipse. In 1991, they embarked on a journey in mid-July to San Blas, Mexico. The seashore faced toward the south and curved over to a mountainous region to the west. On eclipse day, morning dawned bright and clear, relieving three days of solid rain. The eclipse was predicted to occur around noon, so George, Tom and several other travelers lined the beach around 11 a.m. To everyone’s excitement, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The euphoria faded about 30 minutes later when a huge cloud cluster rolled in from the south. It became a race between the moon and the clouds as to which could cover the sun first. A mixture of hope and anxiety penetrated every onlooker.

The sky grew dark and the crowd began hooting and hollering what sounded like involuntary, primal utterances. Finally, the moon won the race and the most visually spectacular display emerged in the sky. Stars twinkled through gaps between clouds. Lightning pierced the darkness, shooting between jagged layers of cloud banks and reflecting off the ocean in the distance. The sun became an empty black hole surrounded by a glowing ring called the corona. Prominences–thin red spikes that encircle the sun–filled the sky. Eberts describes it the way ancient Chinese cultures did: a dragon swallowing the sun. “It was a hole of total blackness, and all around it were these wispy, white tendrils and veins, like the wings of a dragon, backlit from behind. Meanwhile, close to the black circle there were little red flames sticking out from its mouth. The dragon was flying straight toward the sun, wings out and flames engulfing it,” Ebertss remembered. “It was one of the most gorgeously spectacular and freaky things that you could ever imagine. There’s not a camera that could capture it.”

The eclipse only lasted about two minutes before the clouds blocked it, but that’s all it took to change the lives of everyone who witnessed it. It took fourteen years after their first try for George and Tom to finally witness the magnificence of a total eclipse – a wait that was well worth it.

–Photos by Tristan Wyatt

Direct link: http://backdropmag.com/features/web-exclusive-eclipse-chasing/