Editor's note: I've added a short section at the bottom on how I used AI to write this piece, including why voice-to-text is worth trying. Skip it if that's not your thing.
August 21, 2017. Standing in my San Antonio backyard at 1:09 PM, sweat soaking through my shirt. I point my 9.5-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at the sun. No looking through the eyepiece — the scope projects the image onto a piece of cardboard in my hand to view the partial eclipse. A small bite taken out of the sun, sharp-edged and strange, as sweat trickles from my face.
I found out that day that an annular eclipse was coming in six years, and a total solar eclipse a year after that. I made a mental note: don’t miss those.
The annular came October 14, 2023. The total came April 8, 2024. I walked through the same door, using the same gear. Set up at the same patch of grass.
I’m fifty and those seven years passed in a blink. It…
