Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

SHADOWS IN THE SKY 117
Moon’s orbital motion sweeps it around the Earth, more and more
of the Sun disappears behind the Moon’s limb. We see the Moon
in silhouette, a dark circle slowly covering the Sun. Eventually, the
entire disk of the Sun is blocked. When this happens, the sky
grows deep blue, almost purple, like at sunset. The temperature
drops, birds stop singing, crickets will chirp, and it’s like having a
little night in the middle of the day.
This would be odd enough, but at the moment of totality, when
the Sun’s disk is completely covered by the Moon, the Sun’s outer
atmosphere, called the corona, leaps into view. Normally invisible
because the Sun’s surface is vastly brighter, the corona is wispy, ethereal,
and surrounds the Sun like a halo or aura. When the corona
becomes visible, viewers almost universally gasp in awe and delight,
and some have been brought to tears by the sheer beauty of it.
Eclipses are magnificent, and they do not happen very often, but
they are predictable. The Moon’s path in the sky has been charted
for millennia, and ancient astronomers could predict eclipses with
perhaps surprising accuracy. It’s not surprising then that historical
records are full of tales about eclipses. Mark Twain even used one
in his novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. In it a
young man from America is transported back in time to medieval
England and, through a variety of circumstances, ends up being
sentenced to be burned at the stake. However, he happens to know
that a total solar eclipse is about to occur and tells his captors that
if they don’t release him, he’ll take away the Sun. Of course, the
eclipse happens right on schedule and he is set free.
That may sound silly, but it’s based on an actual event, and
none other than Christopher Columbus is in the leading role. In
1503, on his fourth voyage to America, Columbus was stranded in
Jamaica, his ships too damaged to be seaworthy. He relied on the
natives for food and shelter, but they soon became weary of feeding
Columbus’s men. When the natives told him this, Columbus
remembered that a lunar eclipse—when the Earth’s shadow falls
on the Moon, turning it dark—would occur soon. Just as Twain
retold the tale nearly 400 years later (with a solar instead of a lunar
eclipse), the event terrified the natives, who then begged Columbus