A total solar eclipse, when the cosmos clicks into place with the worlds lined up like cue balls, can be one of the most visceral experiences you can have without getting anything illegal.
Some scream, some cry. Eight times, having experienced this cycle of light, darkness, death and rebirth, I felt the light dissolve and saw the crown of the sun spread its pale feathery wings across the sky. And it never gets old. As you read this article, I will be preparing to go to Dallas, with family and old friends, to see my ninth eclipse.
An old friend was absent: Jay M. Pasachoff, a longtime professor of astronomy at Williams College. I have stood in the shadow of the moon three times with him: on the island of Java in Indonesia, in Oregon and on a small island off Turkey.
I look forward to seeing him again next week. But Jay died in late 2022, ending a half-century career as a compelling cosmic evangelist, as responsible as anyone for the sensational circus of science, wonder and tourism that solar eclipses have become.
“We are umbraphiles,” wrote Dr. Pasachoff in The New York Times in 2010. “Once standing in the umbra, the Moon’s shadow, during a solar eclipse, we are encouraged to do so again and again, each time the Moon moves between the Earth and the Sun.”
As the eclipse approaches, Jay can be seen donning his lucky orange pants and heading out on expeditions with colleagues, students (many of whom have become professional astronomers and eclipse chasers themselves), tourists and friends in the corners of every continent. Many who join his tours are introduced to the adrenaline-filled chase of a few minutes or seconds of magic while hoping it doesn’t rain. He knows everyone and hustles to get his students tickets to the farthest reaches of the world, often to jobs operating cameras and other instruments, and puts them in the scientific business.
“Jay is probably responsible for inspiring more undergrads to pursue careers in astronomy than anyone else,” said Stuart Vogel, a retired radio astronomer at the University of Maryland.
His death ended a remarkable streak of success in chasing darkness. He saw 75 eclipses, 36 of which were total. In sum, according to Eclipse Chaser LogDr. Pasachoff spent over an hour, 28 minutes and 36 seconds (he’s a stickler for details) in the moon’s shadow.
“He was larger than life,” said Scott McIntosh, deputy director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who said one of Dr. Pasachoff hangs on the wall of his office in Boulder, Colo.
As the world prepares for the last total eclipse to touch the lower 48 states in the next 20 years, it seems strange that he’s not on the scene. And I’m not the only one who misses him.
“He was probably the single most influential figure in my professional life, and I miss him,” said DanSeaton, a solar physicist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder.
Dr. Pasachoff was a 16-year-old freshman at Harvard in 1959 when he saw his first eclipse, off the coast of New England in a DC-3 chartered by his mentor, Harvard professor Donald Menzel. He was hooked.
After Ph.D. from Harvard, Dr. Pasachoff joined Williams College in 1972 and immediately began recruiting eclipse chasers.
Daniel Stinebring, now an emeritus professor at Oberlin College, was a freshman when he was recruited for an eclipse expedition off the coast of Prince Edward Island.
The day of the eclipse echoed. Dr. Pasachoff, channeling his old mentor, Dr. Menzel, hired a pilot and a small plane. He sent his young student to the airport with a fancy Nikon camera and told him to photograph the eclipse while hanging out of an open airplane door.
“I had an unobstructed view of the eclipse. And, you know, here I was, the only person from Williams who saw the eclipse,” recalled Dr. Steinbring.
A year later in 1973, the young Mr. Stinebring himself to the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya with Dr. Pasachoff and teams from 14 other universities waited for the longest eclipse of the century, about seven minutes total. The moment was life-changing, he said.
“It just made me feel like, if this is what astronomers do for a living, I’d be there,” he said.
Dr. Pasachoff, his older students said, went out of his way to inform local people, not to be afraid of the eclipse and how to watch it safely.
Proud of Dr. Pasachoff himself was involved in his preparations, lining up local scientific support and other connections, equipment, lodging and other logistics years before the actual eclipse.
“Jay always had a Plan B,” says Dennis di Cicco, a longtime editor at Sky & Telescope magazine.
In 1983, Dr. Pasachoff in Indonesia for an eclipse expedition sponsored by the National Science Foundation. He discovers that the digital tape recorder where all his data will be stored is broken.
Dr. called Pasachoff and his wife, Naomi, also a science historian at Williams College who is back home in Massachusetts, have seen 48 eclipses. He tried to order a new tape recorder only to be told that the official paperwork needed to ship the device to Java would take several days. Mr. di Cicco was forced into service. Within 24 hours, he renewed his passport, grabbed the tape recorder and boarded a flight to Indonesia. Mr. came di Cicco just one day before the eclipse.
Dr. Pasachoff paid for the $4,000 round-trip ticket. A Lufthansa clerk told Mr. di Cicco said it was the most expensive coach ticket he had ever seen.
Solar eclipses are now big business and no longer need an evangelist, said Kevin Reardon, a Williams alumnus and now a scientist at the National Solar Observatory and the University of Colorado Boulder, in an interview. “Now, everyone knows that eclipses are great.”
Even with powerful new solar observatories and dedicated spacecraft watching the sun, there is still science to be done during eclipses on earth, such as observing the corona, which continues to bring Jay to life.
Proud of Dr. Pasachoff himself barely missed an eclipse, and he lucked into the weather for never being shut out. He always manages to secure the best sites, and Mazatlán in Mexico seems the most promising for 2024.
But he sent me an email in 2021 saying that a lung cancer had spread to his brain, and he offered material for an obituary.
However, he wrote, “I have not given up the idea of going to the December 4 Antarctic eclipse, for which I have three lines of research.” He did go and sent eerie pictures of the ghost sun on an icy horizon, his last excursion into darkness. However, he continues to plan for future eclipses.
“You know, there’s one eclipse, and then the next one, and then the next one,” said Dr. Reardon. “He wants to see every eclipse and doesn’t want to think there will be a last one.”
It will be sad in the shadows on April 8.
