{"id":103993,"date":"2017-08-22T20:19:32","date_gmt":"2017-08-23T02:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/what-the-last-eclipse-tells-us-about-the-19th-century-west\/"},"modified":"2017-08-22T20:19:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T02:19:32","slug":"what-the-last-eclipse-tells-us-about-the-19th-century-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/what-the-last-eclipse-tells-us-about-the-19th-century-west\/","title":{"rendered":"What the last eclipse tells us about the 19th-century West"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Eclipse_20160901_Composition.jpg\"
https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Eclipse_20160901_Composition.jpg<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

On Aug. 21, 2017, the moon rode its elliptical orbit precisely between Earth and sun, plunging the land below into the crepuscule of a total solar eclipse. Beginning about 11 a.m. Pacific Time, the dark path of totality began its sweep northwest to southeast across the United States, casting its eerie gloom upon Western towns such as Madras, Oregon; Rexburg, Idaho; and Casper, Wyoming. The sky turned violet; shadows sharpened; pigeons took roost and owls took wing. Millions of umbraphiles \u2014 eclipse chasers \u2014 craned their necks to witness more than two minutes of lunar ecstasy, transfixed by an occluded sun that science writer David Baron describes as \u201can ebony pupil surrounded by a pearly iris \u2026 the eye of the cosmos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although partial solar eclipses and lunar eclipses are relatively common, total solar eclipses are rarer beasts: When totality last traversed the entire width of the continental U.S., Woodrow Wilson was struggling to negotiate an end to World War I. Baron, himself a devoted umbraphile \u2014 you might call him a lunatic \u2014 has pursued the phenomenon to Germany, Australia and the Faroe Islands. His new book, American Eclipse, chronicles an instance much closer to home: the shadow that sped from Montana to Texas in 1878, perhaps the most significant total solar eclipse in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

For much of the 19th century, the young United States was a second-rate nation, scientifically speaking, shrouded by what one astronomer deemed a \u201cperiod of apparent intellectual darkness.\u201d The 1878 eclipse promised to lift that metaphorical blackness by supplying literal dusk: Under the moon-dimmed Rocky Mountain sky, American scientists would have the opportunity to seek new planets, study the sun\u2019s outer atmosphere, and even deduce its chemical composition. Researchers leapt at the chance to help America \u201cfulfill its responsibility as an enlightened member of the global scientific community\u201d \u2014 and, in the process, gain personal glory.<\/p>\n

Westerners know Baron from his first book, \u201cThe Beast in the Garden,\u201d which documented \u2014 some would say sensationalized \u2014 a series of cougar attacks in Colorado. In \u201cAmerican Eclipse,\u201d the fiercest beasts are the scientists competing to document the astronomical anomaly. Baron introduces us to James Craig Watson, an astronomer with a Jupiter-sized ego who\u2019s convinced that the eclipse will help him discover an unseen hypothetical planet called Vulcan. We meet Cleveland Abbe, a meteorologist, known charmingly as \u201cOld Probabilities,\u201d who persists in eclipse-watching at Pikes Peak despite a near-fatal case of high-altitude cerebral edema. And then there\u2019s a young inventor named Thomas Edison, eager \u201cto demonstrate that he was a scientist and no mere tinkerer\u201d by measuring the heat of the sun\u2019s corona with a zany (and ultimately failed) invention called the tasimeter.<\/p>\n

Amid all this scientific machismo, the book\u2019s most sympathetic character is Maria Mitchell, an astronomer and suffragette intent on demonstrating the equal abilities of women. At the time, certain pseudo-academics posited that \u201chigher education caused a girl\u2019s body \u2014 especially her reproductive organs \u2014 to atrophy.\u201d To debunk this repugnant theory, Mitchell dispatched a cohort of \u201clady astronomers\u201d to Colorado to study the eclipse and provide \u201ca kind of political theater, promoting social change.\u201d Mitchell\u2019s mission succeeded \u2014 one newspaper called her squad \u201ca conspicuous example of the power and grasp of the feminine intellect\u201d \u2014 though the sexual harassment scandals that roil modern astronomy prove that true equality still eludes the field.<\/p>\n

American Eclipse\u2019s most vivid character, though, is the fledgling West itself. In 1878, the region lingered in a kind of limbo: civilized enough that you could journey to Wyoming in a railcar hung with chandeliers, wild enough that your train stood a considerable risk of being boarded and cleaned out by bandits. The citizens of burgeoning Denver \u2014 a town that \u201caspired to elegance, even enlightenment\u201d \u2014 were particularly desperate to prove their city\u2019s worth to snooty East Coast scientists. As one local boasted to a visiting Englishman, \u201cSir, Colorado can beat the world in eclipses as in everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

While modern astronomers no longer require eclipses to study the heavens, this year\u2019s event still inspires epic Westward pilgrimage. An eclipse festival in Oregon expected 30,000 visitors, and some Jackson hotels have been booked for three years. We live with our eyes cast downward, fixed upon hand-sized screens; this year\u2019s American eclipse offers a chance to lift our gaze to a universe far grander and stranger than the circumscribed worlds we cradle in our palms. \u201cThese rare and unearthly events \u2026 suspend human affairs and draw people out of their quotidian existence,\u201d Baron writes. We may comprehend our solar system vastly better than we did in 1878, but our capacity for awe remains, fortunately, undiminished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A book by a self-proclaimed umbraphile tells the story of a West in shadow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":103994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-103993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103993"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=103993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}