Warming up to the eclipse with Mr. Eclipse 

A retired NASA astrophysicist who goes by “Mr. Eclipse” and has seen 24 eclipses all over the world, including Antarctica, comes to Buffalo this week to reveal what people should look for in the sky here as the moon covers the sun for three minutes and 45 seconds in the afternoon of Monday, April 8. 

“It’s more than just a ring of light around the sun,” said Fred Espenak. His talk at 7:30 p.m. Thursday can be heard for the price of a $10 ticket at the Performing Arts Center, Rockwell Hall, Buffalo State University. It is part of a series of events on campus coordinated by the school’s Whitworth Ferguson Planetarium – from planetarium programs to painting and skygazing, made-for-the-eclipse-year beer tasting and the April 8 Eclipse Fest with food trucks, live music, swag and experts on hand to guide sky watching. 

Mr. Eclipse says the view of totality does not disappoint. “It’s these feathery streamers and there’s structure to it. It’s like silken threads. It’s so unlike anything you’ve ever seen,” said Espenak, speaking by phone from his home in Arizona. “The sun has vanished and you just see this black disc in the sky surrounded by this luminous corona and it’s exquisitely beautiful and it just sends shivers down your back and the hair on the back of your neck stands up. It’s almost supernatural. It just doesn’t seem like a natural event, it’s so far out of our everyday experience and it’s just incredibly beautiful.” 

Espenak, author of 10 books about eclipses, will also be signing and selling copies before and after the talk. 

His passion for eclipses began as a boy when he saw a partial eclipse and the shadow arc of the sun through leaves on a tree at his grandparent’s place in Long Island. Curious, he did some research and discovered that after he turned 18, there would be a total in North Carolina. He waited, borrowed the family car and drove 600 miles by himself to see his first total eclipse. 

His passion for eclipse watching has endured But sometimes he can’t see much. For six of his 30 trips, clouds got in the way. 

“Sometimes the weather doesn’t cooperate,” Espenak said. “That’s very disappointing when that happens, but you try again.”  

April, he admitted, is a month when the risk of rain and clouds getting in the way is greater. “They don’t sing that song about April showers for nothing,” he said. “It’s a time when the atmosphere is very unstable, and transitioning from winter to spring and summer … You get a lot of rain and precipitation that time of year along most of the eastern United States. So it’s dicey.” 

Still, he said, there is hope. “I’ve been looking at satellite images of the United States shot over the past 15-20 years and there are plenty of days when the weather is perfect on any location along the eclipse track, including New York,” he said. “It’s a matter of luck.” 

Espenak’s own luck has been helped by the eclipses. He met his future wife on a 1995 trip to see one in India. A 1991 eclipse in Mexico was another memorable experience because the sun was almost directly overhead, and at 6 1/2 minutes, the eclipse was unusually long.  

After a career as an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, Espenak has stayed connected to the celestial. He retired to a part of Arizona where light pollution doesn’t get in the way and the stars and planets are easy to see. 

“I’ve got an observatory here,” he said. “I’m here for the dark skies.” 

In Buffalo on Thursday, he will explain eclipse insights, including how they work and how geometry factors into the sun and moon’s alignment. 

Espenak will also share photos and video he took with a special camera telescope during the last U.S. solar eclipse in 2017. 

This will be his only local stop before the eclipse. On April 8, Espenak plans to be in Mexico, not Buffalo.  

“That has, statistically speaking, the best probability of good skies,” he said, adding that anything can happen. “It’s no guarantee. It could be cloudy in Mexico and totally clear in Buffalo.” 

For more information on the Buffalo eclipse including events & offerings visit our landing page at visitbuffaloniagara.com/buffalo-eclipse-2024