What is the difference between a total eclipse of the Sun and anything else Nature has to offer? All the difference in the world. A total solar eclipse, it has been said, is Nature's grandest offering. Nothing – not even for me the discovery of a comet – can approach the ecstasy that accompanies the sight of the Sun vanishing and being replaced by a jeweled crown. It's not just the appearance of the Sun transformed that does it; it appears that the rapidly dimming crescent Sun, increasingly covered by the Moon, provides a real-time dynamic event that is truly breathtaking.

The eclipse of 1918 … and of 2008

Of all the eclipses I have seen, for now I'd like to focus on just one – the eclipse of August 1, 2008. It was a repeat of the total eclipse that occurred 90 years earlier, on June 1, 1918. In a sense totality never ended that day long ago. Of course, totality could never last more than seven minutes and a few seconds for any eclipse, let alone a century, but in the minds of those who watch, the experience never ends. There is really no other way to write it; a total eclipse of the Sun is likely Nature's most incredible spectacle.