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Description
I've never been lucky enough to be present for a solar eclipse...and to think I almost missed this one when it was happening. As I sat at my macbook today I noticed suddenly that the screen dimmed to adjust to the darkness in my room, but I simply attributed that to the shortness of the days causing the sun to set early.

And then my friend Raquel called me on the phone to look out the window at the sun. Thank goodness my window faced the right direction, so I was able to watch the a crescent sun glowing on the edge of the horizon.

I thought of how ancient people interpreted solar eclipses with hysteria and melodrama, and didn't feel the least bit surprised. My mother said nothing made her feel smaller and more insignificant than when she observes astronomical events, and I feel the same. What is humanity but a tiny race trapped on a single planet, we have "conquered" the sky, but the universe at large can't be reached, and we're still not so unlike our star-watching ancestors.

Description
I've never been lucky enough to be present for a solar eclipse...and to think I almost missed this one when it was happening. As I sat at my macbook today I noticed suddenly that the screen dimmed to adjust to the darkness in my room, but I simply attributed that to the shortness of the days causing the sun to set early.

And then my friend Raquel called me on the phone to look out the window at the sun. Thank goodness my window faced the right direction, so I was able to watch the a crescent sun glowing on the edge of the horizon.

I thought of how ancient people interpreted solar eclipses with hysteria and melodrama, and didn't feel the least bit surprised. My mother said nothing made her feel smaller and more insignificant than when she observes astronomical events, and I feel the same. What is humanity but a tiny race trapped on a single planet, we have "conquered" the sky, but the universe at large can't be reached, and we're still not so unlike our star-watching ancestors.