. . . and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork!

In a churchyard in Ohio, USA, at the center of eclipse “totality,” Ellen and I watched in amazement yesterday as the moon slid in front of the sun. Through dense solar filter glasses we saw earth’s satellite take a progressively larger bite out of our closest star.

But God of wonder, what awe at the moment of totality! The lunar shadow swept across the landscape at 1500 mph. Suddenly it was dark as dusk, and a hush fell over the crowd around us. Nearby streetlights came on. An otherworldly orange glow hung over the horizon in all directions. Stars and planets appeared. A ring of fire encircled the moon in jaw-dropping beauty. Parts of the lunar surface took color, notably red. We stared transfixed with naked eye.

This heavenly conjunction transported us for three minutes. Then a spontaneous shriek of surprise and delight rose from the watchers as the first bit of sunlight emerged—no, burst—from the edge of the moon.

At that instant I snapped the attached photo with my Canon SX40 camera and its built-in telephoto lens. This is the brief moment when a solar eclipse creates a “diamond ring effect.” Seconds later the emerging sun would have been too bright for photos without a filter.

Astronomers had hoped that solar flares leaping from the surface of the sun would become visible during eclipse totality, but this did not happen. I assumed that the flame-like shapes at the bottom of this image were solar flares, but soon learned they are “solar prominences.” News reports say that although these “look like they could be made of fire, they are actually eruptions of plasma, a hot gas made of electrically charged hydrogen and helium, extending outward from the sun’s surface.

“Solar prominences flow along a magnetic field the sun generates and can last for several months. The prominences can extend into space as far out as 200,000 miles, nearly the distance between the Earth and the moon—that’s roughly 28 times the diameter of our planet.”

Solar flares, in contrast, “are giant bursts of X-rays and energy that shoot from the sun into space at the speed of light. Traveling at that speed, solar flares can reach the Earth in about eight minutes where they can cause disruptions to satellites and communications in the Earth’s atmosphere.”

Whether with flares or prominences, “The heavens are telling the glory of God!”