Billy Ramundo

3/23/15

Earth Science/C Even- Mrs. McClellan

Bilefsky, Dan, and Melissa Eddy. "Europeans (Carefully) Gaze Upward for Glimpse of the Solar Eclipse." The New York Times. The New York Times, 20 Mar. 2015. Web. 23 Mar. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/21/science/space/solar-eclipse-europe.html?ref=space>.

Europeans (Carefully) Gaze Upward for Glimpse of the Solar Eclipse

           The article that I decided to read for my current events assignment talked about the recent solar eclipse in parts of Europe that occurred on Friday, March 20^th. From Europe, a total solar eclipse could be viewed on this date, and many were excited for the event because it was the first since 1999 in Europe. However, many people in Europe were disappointed because due to fog and cloud clover, people in places like London and Paris could not even see the eclipse. This frustrated many people because the eclipse had very high expectations, and most people felt that the event did not live up to them. Even people in places such as Berlin, where the eclipse was completely visible due to clear skies, were let down by the underwhelming eclipse. In the article, it states that a woman who viewed the eclipse stated that, “This time, it barely went dark.” In comparison to the last total eclipse viewable from Europe, this was a very negative review, because in the article, the same woman said that during the last eclipse, “…it went perfectly still…The birds stopped singing, the streetlights even started to come on.” This was not the only negative comparison between the recent eclipse and the one in 1999 in the article. The article detailed first-hand accounts from other people who explained their disappointment in the recent eclipse, and how much more they liked the eclipse that occurred in 1999. Despite all of these negative reviews of the solar eclipse, some people were excited by the event. For example, scientists taking a video of the eclipse from a Norwegian archipelago were amazed by the view, and one of them described it as, “an incredible, incredible sight to see.” Because of these mixed reviews, the article tells us that many people had different thoughts about the solar eclipse, but overall, it is an amazing, and rare event, that scientists await with great joy every time it occurs.                  
         The article I read is not just important because of its content, but also because it can influence people around the world in a big way. This is because a solar eclipse is an event that all of the world experiences at one point in time or another. That means that all people living around the world, will at one time in the future, have the chance to view a total solar eclipse like people in Europe did on March 20^th. Therefore, the reviews of the solar eclipse that appear in the article that I read can have a very big effect on how people living around the world think of solar eclipses. For example, due to the negative reviews in this article about the recent solar eclipse, people might feel less inclined to watch a solar eclipse occurring in the skies above them than they would have before hearing these bad reviews. This shows that, in simple terms, people could become less and less interested in very amazing celestial events that happen all around us just because some people don’t care about them. This may sound far-fetched, but people react in a big way to things they hear on the news, and they are very influenced by the media. Because of this, hearing that a solar eclipse is not all that it’s worked up to be from so many different people who just recently viewed it, can lead to them no longer caring about solar eclipses. This would be a truly horrible thing to happen because solar eclipses are supposed to be amazing, and everyone should view such rare events. However, it is completely possible that this article could have this effect on society.                                 
             The last aspect of this article that I would like to discuss is not the content of it, but how it was written. First off, I believe that the article did not do a very good job of explaining what solar eclipses really are, and what the one that occurred on March 20^th looked like. I think that the article more focused on what people in Europe thought of the eclipse, and I felt like this wasn’t very relevant to the topic of the article. The article’s title was, Europeans (Carefully) Gaze Upward for Glimpse of Solar Eclipse, and the article barely talked about the solar eclipse itself. Also, I think the author could have included some pictures of the solar eclipse to really show the readers what his topic was, as many people learn better with visual aids. Despite not liking these things, I felt that the author’s grammar and structure of his writing were very good, and it made for a well-written article. Overall, I thought it was very informative, and although I didn’t learn much about solar eclipses, I learned a lot about the circumstances surrounding the recent one in Europe.