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I missed the eclipse in 2017. The path of totality wasn’t that close to me, and I had an infant to care for, so traveling was out of the question.

This time was different.

The April 2024 solar eclipse was the last one that’d be visible from the U.S. for decades. Quite possibly, it was the only one that would be within driving distance of me for the rest of my life. I wasn’t going to miss it.

The weekend before, I set out on the long drive north. On the day of, I was camped out in a meadow with a crowd of other sightseers. There were families with kids, young people with dogs, photographers with solar lenses and camera mounts. The sky was clear blue and sunny, with only wisps of cloud. The mood was one of pleasant anticipation.

When the time arrived, the sun looked no different to the naked eye, too brilliant to glance at. But as the minutes crawled by, you could sense something happening. The light dimmed; colors faded. The warmth of a sunny April afternoon cooled into something more like fall.

Through eclipse glasses, the scene was completely different. You could see the dark disc of the moon moving across the face of the sun. It was an eerie sight, all the more so because it was invisible to the unaided eye.

Yes, I wore my Arecibo shirt

Over the course of an hour, that twilight dimming grew more noticeable, and the crowd’s anticipation increased. Through the filter of the glasses, the sun dwindled. It was a circle with a bite taken out, then a crescent, at last a slender arc.

And then, all at once – totality.

The sun dazzled, then dimmed, then darkened. The shadow of the moon, which had been there all along, suddenly emerged into view like an actor rising out of a trapdoor onto center stage.

Night fell in an instant, as swiftly as if a curtain had dropped over the world. The temperature plunged, and a chilly breeze kicked up. Venus emerged in a twinkle. A reddish sunset glow clung to the horizon.

Where the sun had been, there was a black void surrounded by a ghostly ring of fire, like a burning hole in the sky.

There was a collective gasp. A mass indrawn breath.

A goad to the imagination

Solar eclipses have been occurring for the entire span of humanity’s existence. I can only imagine what it felt like for ancient people to see this without knowing what it was. There must have been mass panic, weeping and prayer and frenzy, orgies of hedonism and outbreaks of violence. They probably thought the world was ending, and with good reason.

Even I, knowing it was harmless and that the sun would return momentarily, still felt a little frisson, a shiver at the back of my neck. It was impossible not to.

It was a sharp reminder that the sun doesn’t exist for us; it’s not a hanging lamp put there for our convenience. We live on a planet plunging through the dark, whirling among many other celestial bodies all following their own courses. It was tangible evidence of the vast universe out there, that has nothing to do with us.

In those ancient times, when an eclipse ended and the sun returned, there must have been a rush to interpret its meaning, a proliferation of prophets all offering dueling explanations. Many new religions must have been born, and perhaps some old religions died.

I once wrote that my humanism comes from the stars. After seeing an eclipse, I’ve come to believe that religions come from the stars as well. Not in the sense of UFOs and alien astronauts bringing revelations, but in the sense that people’s imaginations have always been fired by dramatic sights in the world around them.

It’s not just eclipses, but comets, meteor showers, planetary conjunctions, constellations: everything in the heavens that seemed strange, significant or noteworthy. We know that the movement of the skies was important for ancient people, to mark the seasons and predict the times for agriculture, if for no other reason.

But it was also a wellspring of creativity and a goad to the imagination. I wonder how much of our mythology originates from people who saw something unusual in the sky and spun a story about it. The ancient Greeks put gods and heroes there, and other civilizations did the same. It’s not a stretch to imagine that myths of more recent vintage about resurrected saviors and heavenly battles of angels and demons may have similar origins.

Knowledge deepens wonder

Back in the present, that sheer, vertical awe only lasted a moment. I said there was a collective gasp – but then people broke out into laughter, cheers and applause. It was an upwelling of ecstasy. Being there, standing beneath that unreal sky, was transcendent in the truest sense of the word.

The spectacular sight of totality was fleeting. In a few short minutes, the sun reemerged. Light flooded into the world. The sky lightened to blue, and the chill faded.

It was an experience I’ll never forget. And it inspired me in another way as well.

Where people once cowered from eclipses or treated them as portents of doom, now we know them for what they are, and we appreciate them more because of it. People came from hundreds of miles around specifically to see this one, because they wanted to be present for it. Some towns, like Burlington, Vermont, saw their population temporarily double. Our greater knowledge deepened our sense of wonder at the majesty of nature, rather than dispelling it.

The eclipse was no longer something to fear, no longer a sign of divine wrath. The crowds treated it as they should have – just an awe-inspiring natural phenomenon, courtesy of the laws of orbital mechanics and the grand clockwork of the cosmos. From fear to awe, from terror to wonder. That’s what science does.