In a hundred days, on December 14, 2020, a magnificent general comparable to the 2017 “Great American Eclipse” will sweep South America in 24 fascinating minutes.
For 2 minutes and nine seconds, from Chile and Argentina to the broad shadow of the moon’s ninety kilometers, a giant peto will send chills on the skin – and along the spines – of eclipse hunters from all over the world piled up close in Pucon. Chile and southern Neuquén in Patagonia, Argentina.
Or at least let the plan until you know what casts a long shadow over foreign travel. This threatens to turn one of the celestial highlights of 2020 into a “great South American domestic eclipse. “
“We had planned an eclipse cruise with Holland America to take us to the Chilean fjords, to the Antarctic Peninsula and see the eclipse off the Argentine coast,” said Michael Zeiler, founded in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a map and balloon maker running on the GreatAmericanEclipse. com eclipse’s online page. “Now we don’t intend to see the December eclipse because of the dangers of COVID in question – we don’t need to submit long distances with the option of being exposed to the virus. “
This will be the first total eclipse of the sun Zeiler has missed since 2010 and may not be the only one of the eclipse hunters who attaches to this online.
For the most part, I have plane tickets and plan to stop by, with many independent travel agencies and eclipse hunters waiting to see what happens, after all, Chile and Argentina are about to open their borders to foreign travelers.
However, some high-level eclipse travel teams have already been cancelled. One of them is TravelQuest, in Prescott, Arizona, which has been organizing general tours of solar eclipses and astronomical-themed travel for more than 20 years.
“We canceled our 2020 eclipse trips to Argentina and Chile because we just didn’t see the virus disappear in the world as we all expected,” said Aram Kaprielian, president and founder of TravelQuest. “The existing COVID-19 scenario in the United States. ” The states have in fact not helped. Add to that the COVID-19 scenario in South America and despite all the resolution to cancel, for us, it was a simple resolution to make for us.
Kaprielian himself had planned to sign up for his company’s shore excursion in Chile, adding the Atacama desert and Torres del Paine. “This was my eighteenth total eclipse of the sun,” he said.
Etymologically speaking, it is ironic that an eclipse is affected by a coronavirus. The true value of all eclipse hunters is to get a brief but heartbreaking view of the magnificent crown of the Sun, the warmest outer component of the Sun environment that is regularly hidden. through his glare. Corona is a Latin word for crown, although it bears the call of the Spanish astronomer José Joaquín de Ferrer, who coined the term. The coronavirus crown comes from the onset of the virus under a microscope; its surface resembles the solar corona.
Speaking of science, the 2020 general sun eclipse has not yet been canceled through solar physicies. “We still have the reservations of our organization and our clinical team on Argentina’s Atlantic coast, and we continue to prepare and modernize our clinical team,” said Jay Pasachoff, professor of astronomy at Williams College, Massachusetts, who has witnessed 35 eclipses of the sun in general and 72 eclipses of sunshine of all kinds. “But we have admission to Argentina, and I just don’t know what the scenario will be in December . . . I have no confidence, but I still have hope. “
Pasachoff has noticed or worked on each and every eclipse of the sun since 1966, with the exception of 1976, and each and every eclipse of all kinds for at least a decade until COVID-19 prevented him from seeing the annular eclipse on June 21. 2020. This did not prevent him from gathering comments from scientific colleagues on the trail of generality in Asia that day.
“I am a professional astronomer of the sun, so my specialty would be to miss the clinical setback of the 2020 general solar eclipse and the hole in our continuity in reading the shape of the crown in the sunspot cycle,” Pasachoff said.
However, there are two things about general solar eclipses that we can be sure of; will happen and be experienced through those who live or can travel the trail of generality, and there will be some other general eclipse of the sun.
After Chile and Argentina have enjoyed, and broadcast live, their moment of total eclipse of the sun in 532 days, the next total eclipse of the sun will occur on December 4, 2021 a little further south in the Southern Ocean off Antarctica.
Think of cruise ships. Think of vaccines. ” We are booked for an Antarctic cruise by December 2021 and have some confidence in this given the likelihood of a vaccine or effective remedies by then,” Zeiler said.
Can the travel industry handle occasions like a general sun eclipse in a remote corner of the world?/11 and the 2008 monetary crisis, ” said Kaprielian. ” Seeing and experiencing the wonders of this amazing planet and the skies is what drives us to expand our highly specialized organizational circuits.
It is not known how the organization’s visits will have to be replaced in a post-COVID-19 world, and the industry takes it day by day.
All we know is that a general sun eclipse will occur before lunch on December 14, 2020 and that the eclipse hunters of South America, and I hope, will find a way to make a pilgrimage to be part of one of the largest experiments on our planet. . has to offer.
Warning: I am editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse. com and writer of Total Solar Eclipse 2020: A and cash consultant to practice the total in Chile and Argentina on December 14, 2020
I wish you a clear sky and very open eyes.
I am an experienced journalist in science, generation and interested in area exploration, moon observation, night sky exploration, sun and moon eclipses,
I am an experienced journalist in science, generation and travel, interested in area exploration, moon observation, sunset sky exploration, sun and moon eclipses, astro travel, wildlife conservation and nature. I am the editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse. com and the writer of “A Star Observation Program for Beginners: a Pocket Field Guide” (Springer, 2015), as well as eclipse hunting guides.