Photograph of the April 8th 2024 Eclipse by @neohumanity

I arrived in Montreal just in time for the eclipse. As I got off the metro to walk toward the Montreal Science Center, the eclipse had already begun. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people were all walking to the science center at the same time. One would think the crowds are headed for a concert venue. It seemed like the place to be.

During a partial eclipse, if you pay attention to the light around you, it feels... wrong. Something feels off about it. The sun no longer being a neat disc of light, but a chipped off circle, makes for interesting interplays of light and dark on the edges of every object, make all shadows seem "off", without us being able to pinpoint exactly why.

The crowd's energy is palpable. People keep trying to get a glimpe of the sun. Even when stopped at intersections, they are looking up at the sun through their glasses while they wait.

A short 10 minute walk later I arrived at the science center's plaza, where thousands of others had gathered for the same reason. People brought picnic chairs and snacks to comfortably enjoy the spectacle. One can't help but adore humanity - for those few hours, the veneer of errand and made-up responsibilities and stressors in life took a back-seat as everyone gathered to watch a giant rock float across the sun.

20 minutes to go, and the Sun is starting to become a crescent, waning every minute. The excitement in the crowd is slowly building up.

With 10 minutes to go, it starts to get a little bit darker. The sun is getting thinner and thinner.

With 5 minutes to go, everything has become notably dark. Colors seem dull. The wind has picked up slightly, and there is an eerie chill in the air.

1 minute to go. The sky resembles that of dusk. The colors really seem to have drained from everything. The sun looks like nothing but a thin sliver through the glasses, shrinking as you watch it.

All eyes are on the sun, waiting for that sliver to completely vanish. A couple of seconds later... it is gone completely.

Totality.

Everyone takes their glasses off to witness with their naked eyes a dazzling spectacle. The sky is the color of dusk - the deep, almost-night blue you see about an hour after sunset on a clear day. The air far away from you in every direction, outside the shadow of the moon, is still lit up by sunlight, giving the horizon a golden glow in every direction. It looks like sunrise everywhere you look.

I watched the eclipse from Montreal, which was close to the north edge of the shadow, and thus, one half of the sky was brighter than the other.

Everything feels otherworldly and surreal. Scattered across the almost-night sky, are Venus, Jupiter and some bright stars. And right there in the middle of the sky, is the eclipsed sun - A pitch black circular void that looks like a hole in the sky, surrounded by crisp and dazzling white wisps of light - the Sun's outer atmosphere called the corona. None of the photographs and videos you see can do justice to this spectacle. No screen is both bright enough to capture how crisp and bright the corona looks, especially against the dark sky. No screen has contrast high enough to capture how dark the moon's silhouette in front of it which looks like a deep black hole in the middle of the sky. It is something one must see with their own eyes to truly appreciate.

In two places along the edge of the moon, we saw tiny orange-red dots: solar prominences. Prominences are loops of plasma bursting from the surface of the sun that form within a day and last for a couple of months. To be able to see that with your eyes during an eclipse is rare and incredible.

Slowly, the moon glides over and begins revealing the sun again. The very first flash of sunlight comes through a valley or crater on the surface of the moon, crating a sharp burst of light on the edge in one spot. The eclipse looks like a diamond ring. This is your cue to get ready to put the glasses back on. The diamond on the ring cotinues to grow brighter and brighter and just before a bright sliver of the sun comes into view, you put your glasses back on. The sliver of the sun re-appears, slowly growing into a crescent.

All around you, it starts to get brighter again. The colors return to everything. The sky becames a brighter blue. The wind goes back to normal. The chill in the air is gone. There is no longer a gaping hole in the sky. The surreal experience is over in a little over a minute. The crowd dissipates and life goes back to normal.

An rare, incredible phenomenon, over as soon as it begun, and probably won't happen again at the same place for decades. The total solar eclipse a surreal, otherworldly event that everyone should try to experience at least once in their lives.