What goes around, comes around
By DAVID H. LEVY
Sky’s Up Editor in Chief
The evening before the Saturday, July
20, 1963, eclipse was hazy and humid
in Montreal, Canada. I had just arrived
home from where I was living at the
time, the Jewish National Home for
Asthmatic Children in Denver, Colo.
I was enjoying dinner with Mom and
Dad and their friends Leo
The line of light and Leona Kirschberg. A
turned into a single first rate ophthalmologist,
point—the diamond Leo was trying to ensure
we would be careful
ring, and then the that
with eye protection and not
Sun’s corona came go blind during the eclipse.
out. Because the “There is nothing in nature
Sun was nearing that compares to the speed
of the sky darkening at the
the minimum of onset of a total eclipse of the
its 11-year activity Sun,” I said to him.
cycle, the corona “How about a rapidly
was almost circular approaching thunderstorm?”
he countered.
around the Sun. It I then argued that at the
was my first total moment of totality, when
eclipse of the Sun, all of the Sun’s photosphere
and it was a powerful is covered by the Moon,
it should be perfectly safe
experience I will to look at the Sun with
never, ever, forget. unprotected eyes. I was
young and inexperienced,
and even then I knew when it was not
safe—and when it was safe—to look at
the Sun during an eclipse.
The next day, Mom, Dad and I
proceeded to a spot not far from
Thetford Mines in southeastern
Quebec. There we saw the partial
46
stages of the eclipse intermittently as
thickening clouds passed by. As the
cresce