What is the attraction of a total eclipse, deep space?

What is so special about seeing a total eclipse that you're willing to take time off from work to travel hundreds of miles and spend hundreds of dollars to see something that lasts two minutes?

Jeff Struve, president of the Quad-Cities Astronomical Society, opened his laptop computer. "This will showyou why we're going," he said.

He clicked a few keys and up popped an image of the sun, totally blocked by the moon, with only its corona, the outermost part of the sun's atmosphere, glowing like around diamond ring in the darkness of space.

"It's beautiful," he said.

And if you don't grasp that,thenwords won't explain it.

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Paul Levesque, from Moline, grew up in New England, withthe 1972 hit song "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon playing in his head. The tune was aboutan unnamed, self-absorbed lover who, among other things,"flew (his)Learjet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun."

The haunting words and melody referencing an eclipse in 1970 planted an interest for Levesque that grew through the years.

About a year ago, he realized he would be near atotal eclipse said, "Holy cow! I've got to see it! It's a bucket list thing. I cannot miss this."

He is traveling to Missouri for his brush with totality, although he's not saying exactly where. "I'm psyched about it," he said.

"It's like a spiritual thing. It touches you. I mean, the sun goes dark in the middle of the day! What the heck? How is that even possible?"

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Robert Mitchell, physics professor at St. Ambrose University, got hooked onastronomy when he found two books one on constellations and one on planets in his elementary school library.

"It just clicked with me," he said.

Although he's all about science, he finds it "the most incredible coincidence that the distance of our moon and the distance of our sun are just right so that their apparent sizes are almost exactly the same (from Earth) even though the sun is 400 times as big as the moon and is 400 times as far away."

It is those relative distances and sizes thatmake the eclipse possible.

"It's coincidental. Or is it?" he said.

In addition to teaching, Mitchell isdirector of the university-owned Menke Observatory at theWapsi River Environmental Education Center near Dixon.

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What is it about deep space that attracts you?

Mike Ombrello, of East Moline, came to his interest in space through photography. One of his nighttime photos happened to capture the Milky Way, the galaxy that includes Earth, "and the next thing you know, I bought a telescope," he said.

"Since then, I've been photographing deep space objects."

Looking through atelescope, you can see things that seem like make-believe because you have never seen anything like them before. You see greatgalaxies with literally billonsand billions of stars and greatnebula, or gas dust, flaring forth.

You can hardly believe these things exist because whenyou look at the sky with your naked eye, you can't see them. So you wonder if the telescope is playing tricks. But no, those things arereal. They exist. And Ombrello takes pictures of them.

He says his equipment isn't especially expensive, but he's able to capture nebula,the nearby galaxy called Andromeda, that appears as a big whirlpool, and many other objects.

This has led to more exploration and learning.

"I never knew where the Milky Way was or how to find it," he said.

Now astronomy and peering into space is something of an addiction.

"I can't wait for it to get dark enough to see something else," he said.

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Alan Sheidler, president of the Popular Astronomy Club, grew up on a farm in Ohio in the 1960s. There wasn't much light pollution so he could see lots of interesting things in the night sky and,with the Kennedy Administration space program in full gear, "science was king."

Those two elements combined to spur his interest, and he received an inexpensive telescope as a present from his parents for better viewing.

Then one sunny day when he was in late grade school, he and his brother were playing in the barn when they noticed something unusual. They noticedthe sun pouring through a knothole in the barn siding at just the right angle that it cast an image on the opposite wall.

"We could see a circle of light on the other side of the barn," Sheidler recalled. "We looked at it in closer detail and realized we had a perfect image of the sun. The knothole was like a pinhole viewer.

"We got a piece of paper and held it up and we could see sunspots on the sun. We tracked this over a series of weeks, and we could see the spots move. We had a solar observatory in the barn with knotholes."

Eventually the brothers weren't satisfied with the knotholes that existed, so they got a hand drill and made new ones, allowing them to have viewings at different times of the day or year.

They didn't tell their dad until years later. He just smiled, Sheidler said.

Sheidlerretired from Deere & Co. in product development about a year ago, so he's had more time to pick back up on astronomy. He's traveling to Missourito see the eclipse.

He also has made trips to areas of "dark sky," such as Arizona, the Big Island in Hawaii and the outback of Australia.

"That is the most amazing sky I've ever seen because there is zero light," he saidof Australia. "You'd swear there are clouds in the sky. But it's the Milky Way.

"We have no idea what we're missing here," he said.

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The Great American Eclipse: Q-C astronomy clubs, others get ready ... - Quad City Times