Chasing the Shadow

CHAPTER ONE — A MEMORY OF THE SKY

A Story I Grew Up Hearing

Long before I ever thought about traveling to photograph a total solar eclipse, I had already heard stories about the sky from my father.

When I was growing up, he would often tell us about astronomical events and things happening in the night sky. If there was something unusual to see, he wanted us to see it too.

I still remember one occasion when a comet was visible in the early morning sky. My father woke us up before sunrise and took us into our backyard. He pointed toward the western sky and showed us where to look.

At that age, I didn't understand much of the science behind what I was seeing. But moments like that stayed with me.

"Come outside. There is something in the sky you should see."

Perhaps some of my curiosity about the cosmos came from moments like those—from simply having someone encourage me to look up.

There was another story he used to tell me that fascinated me even more.

When my father was studying at Ravenshaw College in Cuttack, he experienced a total solar eclipse.

He would describe how dramatically the surroundings changed as totality approached. Daylight disappeared. The environment suddenly felt different. He remembered birds and crows flying around as the unexpected darkness arrived, almost as though nature itself was reacting to night appearing in the middle of the day.

What stayed with me wasn't only the eclipse itself. It was the fascination in the way my father remembered it.

I sometimes wonder whether witnessing something so extraordinary may have strengthened his own curiosity about the cosmos—the same curiosity that, years later, he would pass on to us. Through his stories, an eclipse that I had never personally witnessed somehow became part of my childhood too.

CHAPTER TWO — A HOPE PRESERVED

My Chance to See Totality

I understood that a total solar eclipse was rare for any particular location.

As a child growing up in Odisha, I didn't know whether I would ever have the opportunity to stand inside the Moon's shadow myself. It almost felt like one of those celestial events I would know through stories.

My father had his eclipse story.

I wasn't sure I would ever have mine.

But somewhere inside me, I kept the hope that perhaps one day I would.

Life eventually brought me to the United States. By then, my childhood curiosity about the sky had grown into something much deeper. I was exploring astrophotography, traveling beneath dark skies, learning more about celestial events, and actively looking for opportunities to experience and photograph them.

And then there was 2024.

A total solar eclipse was going to cross North America. Remarkably, the path of totality was slated to pass directly through the Cleveland area—even my own home was inside the path of totality.

After all those years, I did not necessarily need to travel thousands of miles. The shadow was coming to me.

CHAPTER THREE — TOGETHER BENEATH THE SKY

It Became a Family Event

My cousin's family lives in Virginia. My nephew had also developed a strong interest in celestial events and had been eagerly anticipating this eclipse for years.

The eclipse became something our family wanted to experience together. We were not simply planning where I would photograph it from a technical standpoint. We were planning where we would stand together when the Moon's shadow crossed the Earth.

CHAPTER FOUR — THE WEATHER PIVOT

Then the Weather Changed Everything

Cleveland initially seemed like the natural choice. Having my own home inside totality felt like a rare gift. But as April 8 approached, the meteorological models and satellite cloud forecasts grew increasingly grim. Clouds could ruin everything.

After waiting a lifetime for this moment, I did not want to leave the experience to chance. Texas was my primary backup plan; I even had flights booked. But severe weather warnings and extensive cloud cover began threatening Texas as well.

Across nearly the entire length of the path of totality, forecasts were uncertain. Only one corner of the United States consistently stood out with clear, high-pressure skies: Maine.

At that point, the decision became simple. If the clear sky was in Maine, we would chase the shadow to Maine.

The shadow was coming to my home. Instead, I decided to chase it.

CHAPTER SIX — ARRIVAL

The Frozen Lake

Eventually, we found our viewing spot by Moosehead Lake. And somehow, the location was more breathtaking than I could have imagined.

In front of us lay a vast frozen lake. Beyond the ice rose the silhouette of snow-dusted mountains. And above it all was an unbroken dome of pure, deep blue sky — exactly what we had driven hundreds of miles to find.

Astrophotographers, families, and eclipse chasers were setting up camp along the shoreline. Everyone had traveled here for the same singular purpose: to stand in the Moon's umbra.

BEHIND THE LENS — FIELD NOTES

The Eclipse Setup

I had researched the mechanics of total solar eclipses thoroughly. Totality moves with astonishing speed, and once it begins, the clock is relentless. There is no time to troubleshoot equipment or rethink settings.

I engineered redundancy into my plan. I set up my telescope and tracking mount with a dedicated telephoto camera to capture the fine structure of the solar corona and prominences, while a second camera was locked down to document the wider landscape and changing environmental light.

Unlike landscape astrophotography under a steady night sky, a total solar eclipse offers no second chances or dress rehearsals. When totality arrives, you have only minutes.

This was my first total solar eclipse. And this isn't something you can really practice beforehand.

THE INSTANT OF CONTACT

The Diamond Ring

I knew from all my research that I had to act with complete presence of mind. The transition into totality happens in fractions of a second. As the lunar valleys swept across the final sliver of the solar photosphere, a single dazzling bead of pure starlight flared into the darkness.

The Diamond Ring.

Months of preparation suddenly compressed into heartbeats of pure instinct — watching the camera, checking the exposure, and trying not to let the awe overwhelm the craft. And somehow, the sensor caught it.

THREE MINUTES IN THE MOON'S SHADOW

Totality

When totality arrived, the experience was completely different from anything I had ever imagined.

The Moon became a perfect, velvet-black sphere punched into the center of the sky. Radiating outward in every direction was the solar corona—pearly white, delicate, ethereal, stretching into deep space with magnetic filaments no photograph can truly reproduce.

All around us, the horizon carried a strange 360-degree sunset glow. Bright planets and stars appeared in the middle of the afternoon. The temperature plunged.

For all the preparation I had done with lenses, computers, and tracking gears, there came a moment when I simply stopped thinking about cameras.

I stepped back and just looked.

STELLAR FIRE

Prominences Along the Limb

Along the southwest edge of the black lunar silhouette, vivid pinkish-red rubies flared into view. These were giant solar prominences—towers of ionized hydrogen gas held aloft by magnetic fields hundreds of thousands of miles across.

Seeing them with my own eyes through binoculars and through the telephoto lens was startling. They were not abstract science diagrams from books or internet articles. They were real, violent, beautiful stellar storms taking place right above our heads.

THE COMPLETE ARC

From Light to Shadow — and Back Again

Over the course of more than two hours, the Moon progressed across the face of the Sun. Bringing these frames together reveals the celestial dance of orbital mechanics unfolding in real time.

A STORY COMES FULL CIRCLE

History Repeated

During totality, something happened that immediately brought me back to the stories my father had told me as a boy in Odisha.

As the darkness deepened, birds began flying erratically across the lake, searching for roosts as if night had arrived. Across the distant trees and campgrounds, dogs began barking and howling into the strange twilight.

Decades earlier, my father had described the exact same scene when an eclipse turned day into night over Cuttack. Now, thousands of miles away in the north woods of Maine, I was standing in that same shadow and hearing it with my own ears.

For a moment, two eclipses separated by generations felt connected.

The eclipse my father had described throughout my childhood was no longer only his story. I finally understood what he had been trying to share with us all along.

For a moment, two eclipses separated by generations felt connected.

RETURN TO DAYLIGHT

The Long Road Home

Eventually, the third contact Diamond Ring flared, sunlight flooded the landscape, and the eerie chill lifted. Cameras came down, telescopes were gently packed away, and thousands of travelers began making their way south.

The drive back through Maine and toward Portland turned into an epic crawl. Roads that would normally take two hours stretched into five or six. Ahead of me lay a long return journey back to Cleveland, with work waiting early the next morning.

Later, I learned that friends back in Cleveland had managed to catch totality through breaks in the clouds. But I had no regrets about chasing the forecast to Maine. Maine gave us pristine, crystalline skies, an unforgettable mountain landscape, and memories that will last a lifetime.