1999 - The sound of an eclipse

You will need an MP3 player to hear this recording - you can get them free over the Internet.

Right click on the image below and click save target as.

(ecl99.mp3 - 1.14MB)

Chris O'Byrne brought a small tape-recorder with him to the eclipse in 1999. It was turned on about 3 minutes before totality, and off again not long after totality ended. This file contains that recording.

You can hear the excitement build in the first three minutes, culminating in a massive outpouring of joy and emotion as the lunar shadow engulfs us. When totality ends, 2 min 22 sec later, there is another outpouring of joy as the sunlight returns.

There were two reasons why I brought the tape-recorder with me. The first reason was because I was just after writing a piece of software for my Psion handheld computer to predict the eclipse. You can hear my Psion beeping in the recording at strategic times during the eclipse. I wanted to see how accurate my software was - the plan was to shout "second contact" and "third contact" into the tape recorder, which was lying beside my Psion, and I would later analyse the recording to see how close the beeps came to reality.

The second reason was because I had heard that people go a bit crazy during an eclipse, and I wanted to have a recording of it if it happened in Bulgaria. Little did I know that I would be going so crazy myself that I would forget to shout "second contact" and "third contact" as my plan called for! However, you can clearly hear that I shouted "diamond ring" right at the instant of the last "beep" from my Psion.