The four minutes and 10 seconds of the total eclipse in Torreón (Coahuila) were experienced with the emotion of one of those soccer finals that mark an era: between cheers, applause, tears of joy and an emotion that was felt in the atmosphere as it progressed. the chronometer and the moon hid the solar disk. “Astronomy is a science of patience,” warns Christian Terán, the coordinator of the Colombian Astronomy Olympiad, while counting down in the Planetarium of that city, the place chosen by NASA to transmit the astronomical phenomenon to the world. “Long live Mexico!”, says this man who travels the world to see eclipses when there are three minutes left until nightfall at midday, exactly at 12:16 in the afternoon.
As the morning progressed, the hundreds of visitors and astronomers who arrived at the Planetarium, in the Torreón Urban Forest, applauded each time the clouds left and allowed a better view of the eclipse. Although the US space agency chose this place for the official transmission because it was at the midpoint of its trajectory and because of its good visibility, this city with a desert climate woke up cloudy on Monday, which, at times, made it difficult to see the phenomenon.
“Ready guys, it's getting dark,” announces Victor Hugo Cabrera, the director of the Puebla planetarium, who traveled to Torreón with his wife and two daughters. “It's beautiful, look at that,” he says, pointing to the planets in the sky while his daughters record a video that they share on WhatsApp with his Scout group. “It was worth every minute we waited,” says one of them. “From our horizon, you could see the planet Saturn, I couldn't see Venus, I couldn't see Jupiter either. Mercury was very close to the Sun, it couldn't be seen through the clouds either, but all the planets were there and, after 60 solar cycles, I managed to see the same thing,” says Cabrera, a scientist who fell in love with eclipses in the last solar cycle. total that could be seen in Mexico before this, in 1991. “Experiencing an eclipse is a unique experience,” he says, still with tears of emotion in his eyes.
A rooster and the whole family
Gloria Enríquez, a professor and amateur astronomer who traveled to Torreón from Guadalajara with her husband, son and grandchildren to see the eclipse, agrees with this. There, through the Cotton Museum, she was able to get a rooster to see the effects the phenomenon has on animals.
“I have been passionate about this type of phenomena since I was a child. It will be the last one I see. Next time I'll be behind the sun. It will be in 2052. But we brought the children and grandchildren to continue with this,” she says at the beginning of the eclipse while the rooster does not stop crowing every few minutes. Later, when the moon covers the sun and it becomes night, the rooster—which they called Comet Diablo and which ended up becoming something of a celebrity at the event—fell asleep. “The behavior of animals during the eclipse is very beautiful. “If you look at the birds, their behavior is changing because the climate is changing too.”
This is the second total solar eclipse that Enríquez has seen. The first was in 1991. She brought her daughter who was only one year old and who today also accompanies her with the t-shirt she made for her for that occasion – this time in her hand – and with the filters they used then to show them to the people. curious people who came to see the rooster. Her grandchildren, for their part, made their own pinhole boxes to view the eclipse safely, and her husband brought all kinds of measuring instruments, from thermometers to anemometers, in addition to his collection of meteorites and moon rocks to share his passion with other fans. Any tool is good to pass on the family passion to the little ones in the family. “Seeing the universe is impressive because it means feeling part of life,” says Gloria excitedly.
4,000 kilometers of travel to see the eclipse
Without a doubt this has been the event of the year in Torreón. According to what the director of this city's planetarium, Eduardo Hernández, told El País, around 50,000 people came to the Urban Forest to see the eclipse. The influx of people has sold out hotel rooms and flights for weeks. “The entire planetarium team, which was around 400 people who worked on this, is happy and satisfied,” he says at the end of the event. “People were able to see the totality in a single shout. Although it was cloudy at the beginning, it opened completely in those four minutes.”
Among those who excitedly watched the phenomenon was a group of five astronomers and disseminators from the National Observatory of the National University of Colombia who traveled the almost 4,000 kilometers that separate Bogotá from Torreón to witness the eclipse. “We are interested in studying and recording this very rare event,” says one of them, Juan Sebastián Hincapié, an electronic engineer and master in astronomy, with a specialty in instrumentation and radio astronomy for solar physics. The group arrived equipped with the distinctive Colombian vueltiaos hats and a computerized telescope that can be aligned with the sun by entering coordinates to follow the phases of the eclipse. In addition, they connected it to a camera to record all phases of the event.
“The heavens have no borders,” says his compatriot Christian Terán. Although he has not traveled with the group of Colombians, they are known for this type of events in which, as happened this Monday in Torreón, everyone shares equipment and celebrates the possibility of seeing the Universe from Earth as one of the games of their lives. , a moment that will remain etched in your memories forever.
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