The Solar Eclipse

Monday, April 15, 2024

After the baptism Justin bought some sandwiches and we all headed back to Brandons backyard to enjoy the Solar Eclipse. It was amazing. I don’t know how to explain it and you can’t capture the emotions with a photograph or video but all I can say is that it was a spiritual experience.

It was also a miracle and a tender mercy for me. The weather forecast for Monday was thunderstorms all day. Monday morning was completely overcast and you couldn’t even tell where the sun was. I said a prayer and told my Father in Heaven that I knew that in the grand scheme of things it was not important that I see the eclipse and my life wouldn’t change if I missed it but it sure would be nice if he could clear the skies enough for me to enjoy this moment.

Around noon, blue patches started showing up in the sky. I was hopeful that maybe we would be in one of those blue patches at 1:30 when full occlusion happened.

As we watched the start of the eclipse around 12:30 clouds would drift passed the sun and I figured that would be good enough to enjoy full occlusion but about ten or fifteen minutes before full occlusion, the sky cleared entirely without a cloud in site except on the horizon.

The first two pictures are the best we could do with our camera’s. The above picture is pulled from the internet. It is more what it was actually like, but I don’t think it is from this eclipse.

I would love to hear other people’s descriptions, but to me, when I took my glasses off, I saw the moon which was pitch black and the entire sky was black, but it was as if the entire perimeter of the moon was surrounded by a ring of brightly shining diamonds. It wasn’t a smooth ring but sharply jagged. It filled my soul with wonder and awe, and I truly felt the spirit. I think this picture is the closest to what I saw.

Near the right-hand bottom of the moon was a “diamond” that was glowing substantially brighter than the many other diamonds and I wondered what it could be. I was transfixed for the entire four minutes of the occlusion. This picture shows what the many diamonds actually were. They were solar flares, and you can see the brighter one on the bottom right corner.

--------------------trivia--------------------

The electromagnetic radiation from cell phones (or electrical lines) don't have enough energy to break a DNA molecule and so can have no negative health effects. An X-ray particle on the other hand has 480,000 times as much energy as a cell phone signal particle and can damage your body.

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