astronomy – Maddie Grigg

Solar eclipse, French-style

The internet today is full of solar eclipse photographs.

Some of the best I’ve seen are not of the sun being eaten by the moon but the mottled crescent-shaped shadows created in the streets, in bedrooms and on furniture.

Here in south west France, we had a great view from the village boulodrome. Folk brought along food to share. Word had clearly got around that this was a good spot. Various groups, mostly French, sat in chairs and on picnic rugs to enjoy the spectacle.

When it came, the special eclipse glasses made it an incredible experience.

There were others using welding masks and goggles, as well as pinhole cameras made out of boxes.

I managed to get the shot below by holding my eclipse glasses over the camera on my phone, early on in the process. Not the best image, but you get the picture.

Unlike in 1999, when the UK had a total eclipse, this one was only partial – about ninety seven or eight per cent for us.

It was humbling to appreciate the sun’s mighty force, even when its battery is drained to the last few percent.

It went a bit darker, but not like in 1999 when the eclipse was in the middle of the day rather than at sunset.

The streetlights didn’t come on this time, nor did the birds suddenly go quiet after coming into roost.

Still, it was shared experience and people in various countries enjoyed this natural phenomenon. Truly awesome, in the absolutely real sense of the word.

Sunset itself was pretty wonderful, too.

And then -much, much later – it wa the turn of the Perseids meteor shower, which was ‘like a movie’ according to one of my friends who just happened to wake at two-thirty in the morning and remembered to go outside and look at the sky.

We saw several shooting stars before we went to bed, but also so many fast-moving satellites, which were never really a part of the night sky when I was a young child in the 1960s.

Anyway, thank you, Sun and Moon, for forgetting your differences and coming together for such a spectacular occasion.

I’m off for a sleep now.

Speak soon.

Love, Maddie x

Eclipse ready and waiting in France

Well, it’s the eclipse tomorrow night and, here in south west France, we’re having a party down by the boulodrome to welcome it.

In what’s called an ‘l’auberge espagnole’ (in the UK, we’d say ‘bring food to share’ and in the States they’d call it a ‘pot luck supper’), we’ll have plenty to eat as we gaze at the night sky, ready for the big event and then maybe the annual Perseids meteor shower a bit later on.

Much earlier, just before sunrise, we’ll have the grand parade pf six planets aligning in the morning sky.

So quite a few lovely celestial happenings all on one day.

I feared I might only be able to view just two of them when my promised eclipse glasses failed to arrive on time via Amazon, despite ordering them two weeks ago.

Like everywhere else, there’s a run on these special specs and even E Leclerc has sold out.

But La Poste has just come by and delivered my lunettes.

I was so happy I almost hugged the postwoman.

Back in 1999, I was editor of The Bridport & Lyme Regis News. I saw the total eclipse while perched on the rickety steps to our old office, which should have been condemned to be honest, but this was in the days when local newspaper offices were famous for being squalid to say the least.

The one upshot was the office was at the heart of the community so we had stories coming into us in person on a regular basis.

At the allotted time, the eclipse did its thing, the lights in Bridport’s main street came on and the birds came home to roost.

Down at West Bay, where my chief reporter was installed, the seagulls did not know if they were coming or going as darkness fell on the many spectators and holidaymakers soaking up the view.

A young Number One Son climbed Hincknowle Hill on the other side of the road from The Half Moon Inn at Melplash (which his stepdad and I were running at the time) and watched it with Mr Grigg and a group of fascinated villagers.

It was one of those very unforgettable experiences.

The one tomorrow night will be a deep partial eclipse for the UK (about 95.8 per cent at Lands End) and about 99.5 per cent for us in France.

Now I’ve got the glasses, I’m looking forward to it.

Take care out there.

Love, Maddie x

In a galaxy far, far away…

We were sitting there, out in a French garden last Friday, listening to the sound of a midwife toad (look them up, they’re incredible).

(The noise they make is more like a scops owl, but it doesn’t show up on the Merlin bird app on my phone for the obvious reason that a toad is not a bird.)

Anyway, Mr Grigg began regaling the barbecue guests with a story about a very low aeroplane we’d watched in the sky one afternoon earlier in the week.

It went into a cloud and we had followed its trajectory, the two of us fully expecting it to come out the other side.

But it didn’t, which led me to suggest a Bermuda Triangle-type theory in which the plane used the cloud as a time and space portal to disappear into a different world.

I relayed this to the others, who were a bit non-plussed by this explanation, with one of them even humming the tune to The X-Files and another doing an impression of a cuckoo.

So I zoned out and gazed up at the night sky, which is my wont, while they discussed UFOs and other dimensions. In my own head, the theme music for Stranger Things was playing loudly, drowning out their scorn.

And that’s when I saw it, a long line of lights moving slowly towards the little full moon, which was about to appear above a tree.

I savoured the moment for a few milliseconds and then said calmly: ‘What’s that up there?’

All eyes turned to the sky. We watched this strange phenomenon for a minute or two as it traversed its night stage, seemingly on some otherwordly mission above our heads. We were transfixed.

By the time I took out my camera from my jeans pocket, the sight was dimming and so were my photography skills because I was so excited.

After the thing left our field of vision, silence ensued, followed by a feverish conversation about what we’d just witnessed.

It took me another five minutes to retrieve something from the back of my mind and to declare the thing we’d just seen was the Starlink satellite train. I’d heard about it once on the radio and had always wanted to see it, and now I had.

It’s operated by SpaceX, whose driving force is a strange man I do not like. I refuse to name him so my blog doesn’t get launched in to the outer atmosphere but just think of Batman gone bad and you’ll know who I mean.

That aside, we all rely on the internet these days, so the Starlink satellites have a job to do and, when you read up on it, you realise that there is so much in this world we do not understand.

And why am I telling you this? Because you need to know.

Also, the thing in the sky looked very like a Star Wars lightsaber moving gracefully across the universe. And as today is May the Fourth and I always put down my religion as Jedi on the census, I felt I needed to share that with you.

Have a great week.

Love, Maddie x