Right before totality — when the moon completely covers the sun — the last little beads of sunlight shine through the rugged lunar surface. Then when the moon covers the sun, the corona becomes visible; this is the outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere, usually hidden from the human eye by the brightness of the star.

Some viewers cheer, others sob. Some jump up and down while others stay put in admiration. Everyone has a different reaction, Nichols said.

“It’s awe-inspiring because you’re seeing the sun and the moon and the sky like you’ve literally never seen them before,” she said. “It’s something you think you know so well, that you’re seeing completely differently. The corona is only visible to us during a total solar eclipse. That’s your only way to see it unless you go travel in space or something, and that’s not going to happen for most of us.”

Eclipse offers rare opportunity to study sun, atmosphere, animals

But as soon as an eclipse starts, it’s over.

“Those few minutes seem like they went by in a flash,” Nichols said. “And you go, ‘Oh my goodness, when is the next one?’ A lot of people have that experience: They start looking at the calendar and go, ‘OK, when can I go see another one of those?’ Because you get hooked.”

A song and a half

This year’s eclipse will also be all the more special as other planets line up next to the celestial protagonists: Jupiter will be visible to the upper left, and Venus to the lower right. Others might be visible but dimmer, including possibly Saturn, Mars and Mercury.

From January until October, the sun will also be in its most active period in two decades, according to a report in The Washington Post. During the eclipse, humans will be able to see much of this activity, including sunspots, solar flares, solar winds or bright streaks, loops or eruptions on its surface, and possibly even an explosion of plasma from the corona.

“The sun is a giant, giant fireball, so it’s always going to be active. It’s like a volcano,” said Ethan Chivari, a freelance photographer from Aurora who saw the 2017 eclipse in southern Illinois and is headed back in April. “It’s going to make for great photos … add some really nice detail.”

...continued

©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.