Ontario ‘task force’ prepares Canadians for total solar eclipse — and beyond

globalnews.ca:

science fiction universe, the Ontario Eclipse Task Force (OETF) is made up of scientists, educators and other leaders in the field of astronomy who have met once a month for more than a year to prepare for an event that will last only approximately three-and-a-half minutes.“It’s really an unreal experience,” described astrophysicist Dr. Ilana MacDonald of University of Toronto’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, who also chairs the OETF.“The sky becomes very, very dark.

So as dark as it would be just right after sunset… and then temperature will go down considerably. Animals and birds and insects will start to act like it’s nighttime.”Though MacDonald has not experienced a total eclipse herself yet, she recalls the first partial eclipse that she encountered as a child in rural Quebec, when she was able to observe the tail end of an eclipse through a pinhole viewer made out of a shoe box with her father, after having been kept indoors at her school.MacDonald describes being able to experience astronomical events like these first-hand, rather than from textbooks or class demonstrations, as core memories that sparked her lifelong curiosity and passion for astronomy and science.“There’s more happening in the universe than just what we consider here on Earth,” MacDonald said.

“I really like the idea of people all looking up at the sky together, and totality itself only happens for a couple of minutes. So you have all these people looking up at this one thing and, and being inspired and just in wonder of it.”In 2017, a partial eclipse was visible across Canada, ranging from 89 per cent in Victoria, B.C., to 11 per cent in Resolute, Nunavut.