Eclipses still trip us into a place of mystery and awe

Country Living with Francis Farragher

THERE’S always a sense of mystery over great celestial events and especially the rarer ones such as eclipses, one which we witnessed (well maybe not) last Thursday, June 10, when the moon for a few hours blocked out a section of the sun.

These types of occurrences probably make us all that little more aware of what tiny dots we are on this planet but yet the little specks that make up our lives are the essence of what we are.

By chance on that morning of June 10, I happened to be driving back from the east of the county and by noon the temperature gauge in the car was at 20° under a most impressive blue sky.

The River Shannon though was the turning point. Skies that were blue, gradually merged into lighter shades of grey, and then into darker strokes, the further one penetrated into the West. Here and there though, through the darker clouds the sun did manage to break through and those sky enthusiasts with the special glasses did manage to catch a glimpse of the solar eclipse, a phenomenon that has grabbed the attention of scientists, emperors, philosophers and religions back through the centuries.

A megalithic site in Meath dating back to over 3,000 years BC contains a number of round and spiral shaped carvings now thought to correspond to a solar eclipse of that time while royal astronomers in China as far back as 2,000BC had the rather risky occupation of predicting eclipses for their emperor.

Two Chinese astronomers of that era, Hsi and Ho, might have been noted academics of their time, but probably that’s where the science part of things ended, as the belief of  this era was that an eclipse was caused by a mysterious dragon trying to bite off a chunk of the sun.

In order to fend off the sun-eating dragon, the emperor and his warriors, needed prior knowledge of his arrival so that the natives could arm themselves with bows and arrows (no need for nuclear power then!). However, things went belly-up when the two astronomers ‘took to the beer’ for a lengthy period; got stotious drunk; missed out on their eclipse prediction; and were promptly beheaded by the emperor for their negligence. (There’s always misfortune with drink as my mother used to note many years ago).

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.