Cloudy with a chance of eclipse

Santiago Helou Quintero: Senior Reporter

The crowds gathered at the edge of Lake Ontario looked up at the sky anxiously, watching the clouds as the light around them dimmed.

Monday’s solar eclipse was close to reaching its peak at 3:19 p.m. and the sun had been hidden behind the clouds for more than 40 minutes.

Toronto wasn’t on the path of totality and although the waterfront was close -99.95 per cent obscuration- that .05 made for a noticeable difference.

“It was a little underwhelming until it got dark, I thought we would miss it entirely,” Maddi Mcknight said. “Then it got really climactic when it got dark all of a sudden it just popped out at that right moment.

The clouds parted just in time for the peak obscuration on the shores of Marilyn Bell Park.

Even before the sun broke through the clouds, Madeleine Hackborn was enjoying the experience

“The light quality in the sky was so interesting,” Hackborn said. “You look into the horizon and you see this like rainbow gradient like this dark, dark blue in the horizon going from blue to pink and to like this dark red colour and the and green and yellow and the other side.”

She said the moment the eclipse became visible felt like it was choreographed.

“It was super dark and you look around, everything is so desaturated and in the middle of the day it’s kind of a jarring experience and then all of a sudden the clouds part and then there’s this beautiful little sliver that’s covered by cloud and it was like just the whitest light and around it the clouds were like sort of streaking and so there’s just like really like beautiful like halo kind of effect,” Hackborn said.

Many animals may appear to behave strangely during the eclipse.

Studies have shown they engage in nighttime behaviour as the eclipse approaches its totality.

“They were very active and the geese were flying all around and they were calling to each other,” Hackborn said. “There were seagulls and ducks and during the eclipse, it seems like they all left the water and then they came back when the light gradually started to come back.”

Hackborn said the eclipse was a more impactful experience than she was expecting

“There was just a strong feeling, It’s hard to even describe it. There’s just like a strong feeling in the air.

I wasn’t expecting it to experience this like... night-to-day transition and the feelings that come with that, you know? It’s not just the light changing, it didn’t just look like the morning, it felt like a morning.”

While most people brought ISO 12312-2 solar eclipse glasses, Anna Khalizeva had a DIY method to watch the eclipse.

“I’m using basically a lid from one of my pots that I sooted up over a candle. This is my father’s system of watching the eclipse and it actually works.”

She was worried in the morning about the clouds but that did not dull her excitement about watching the eclipse.

“I’ve always liked astronomy, and this is actually the second eclipse in my life that I’m watching,” Khalizeva said. “The first one was a partial eclipse in 1997 when I was a kid so this is the second one I’m watching and I don’t want to miss because the next one neither of us is going to be here.”

Krish Silins brought their film camera to try and capture the moment.

“So we’re gonna find out what happens,” Silins said. The challenge I’m having is that there’s such a high angle”

Shooting the eclipse without filters can cause permanent damage to cameras.

“I have a polarized filter on that I’ve had for years,” he said. “This is actually my dad’s equipment.”

Silins said he wasn’t worried about the cloud coverage and that it added an interesting depth to the pictures.