HALIFAX — Early next month, millions of Canadians will look to the skies to witness a total solar eclipse. But some people are disappointed when clouds get in the way.
David Hunter is hoping to get an unobstructed view and encourages others to join him. A retired medical physicist from western New Brunswick is leading a group of volunteers to build a solar-tracking telescope that will be hoisted into the air by a weather balloon on the afternoon of April 8.
“The main goal is to get past the existing clouds,” Hunter said in an interview, adding that the helium-filled balloon will be launched at 3 a.m. from Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick, and fly up to 30 kilometers above Earth. He added that there is a possibility of an increase. 30:30 PM Atlantic Daylight Time.
As the balloon ascends, it carries an 8-foot cylindrical box equipped with a small computer, four tracking devices, and several cameras, some of which send images to a ground station at the Florenceville Inn. will be sent.
From there, the video will be livestreamed to several viewing locations in western New Brunswick and a YouTube channel, with a link to be posted on Hunter’s website shortly.
The moon’s 185-kilometer-wide shadow will enter Florenceville-Bristol at 4:32 p.m. ADT, plunging the surrounding area into darkness for more than three minutes. Only then will you be able to safely look at the sun without eye protection.
Assuming there are few clouds, the sun’s light disappears into dusk, revealing twinkling stars and planets, and the horizon glows orange like a sunset. At that point, the sun’s wispy corona fans out from behind the black moon, creating a fantastic sight that would normally be lost in the glare of sunlight.
Experts say temperatures will drop by about 5 degrees Celsius, which could cause nearby animals to behave strangely. And it ends when the moon’s shadow races eastward at about 3,700 kilometers per hour.
Hunter said the biggest technical challenge his team had to overcome was designing a machine that would allow the telescope to continuously track the sun as the 8kg balloon payload swayed in the wind. He said it was something he would do.
“It rotates, but it also rocks and weaves,” Hunter said, adding that students from the University of New Brunswick also worked on the project. “This was the most difficult part…we were told it wasn’t possible.”
Using technology developed at Laval University in Quebec City, Hunter and his team built their own version of the gimbal mechanism, known as the “Agile Eye.” Rather than pointing the flying telescope at the sun, it points down a mirror attached to two computer-controlled motors.
“The mirror always moves to point the sun at the telescope,” Hunter said.
Experiencing solar eclipses has been a lifelong passion for Hunter. As a boy growing up in Florenceville, he witnessed his first solar eclipse in 1963 because he was reading the “How and Why Wonder Books” series about the solar system and the universe.
“I looked at pictures of galaxies, especially the Orion Nebula, and thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s beautiful.'”
He built a telescope from a kit and traveled to Nova Scotia with his family to view a total solar eclipse in March 1970.
“It was cloudy,” he said with a sigh. “I felt so helpless. It was my first experience being covered in clouds during a solar eclipse.”
As an adult, Hunter worked in Toronto researching digital imaging methods for breast cancer screening. However, his interest in cosmology never waned. “When he retired, he thought he would have space if he moved back to New Brunswick,” he said. “You can actually see what’s in the sky, which is not that easy in Toronto.”
When he learned that the moon’s shadow would pass directly over his hometown during a solar eclipse in 2024, he thought, “I don’t want to get cloudy again.”
Meanwhile, prevailing westerly winds are expected to carry the balloon along the moon’s expected trajectory, but this is not certain. “We have no control over the direction of where it goes,” Hunter said. “We are at the mercy of the wind.”
Still, Hunter said the test flight in November was a success. As the balloon approached the Gulf of St. Lawrence on New Brunswick’s east coast, a signal from a ground station told the onboard computer to cut the rope between the balloon and the payload. The payload fell safely to the ground, and a parachute slowed its descent.
Despite the mysteries of the universe, total solar eclipses are not uncommon. According to NASA, they appear somewhere on Earth once or twice each year. In most places, it typically takes 400 to 1,000 years to reappear. The last time a total solar eclipse passed through what is now known as central New Brunswick was in 982 A.D., Hunter said.
In contrast, Nova Scotia is relatively deserted and experienced total solar eclipses in 1970 and 1972. And next month’s solar eclipse will also cross the northern tip of Cape Breton. Since 1963, Canadians have witnessed five total solar eclipses, but the 2008 total was observed over the upper Arctic.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 10, 2024.
— David Hunter’s website is https://eclipseplus.ca.
Michael McDonald, Canadian Press
