Once in a "new" moon, celestial objects line up in a way to remind us that there is still absolute wonder in the universe. When the moon, the sun, and Earth align for solar and lunar eclipses, they are beautiful nudges to look up and take note of our poignant place in the Milky Way and beyond.
The total solar eclipse that graced the skies of Iceland, northern Russia, Greenland, Spain, and a small part of Portugal this week was awe-inspiring. One woman was viewing it in Mallorca, an island off the coast of Spain, happened to catch a conversation between what she believed to be a father and son, which made it all the more special. She shared the amazing visual and the conversation in an Instagram clip,
The woman, Julia Rioboo, joined a crowd to watch the gorgeous event over the Mediterranean Sea. In a solar eclipse, the moon crosses between Earth and the sun, blocking the sun's light. In the clip, we see the moon cast its shadow while the sky goes black, leaving only what looks like a ring of fire to behold. She wrote, "I accidentally recorded the most beautiful conversation between a father and his son during the eclipse."
We hear a man say in English, "Crazy, isn't it?" A boy answers, "In real life?" The dad assures him, "This is real life, yes."
But the boy isn't convinced, as presumably he'd never seen such a thing. He continues his line of questioning: "I think it's a video." The man goes into educational mode: "It's not a video. That's the sun, and the moon is in front of it."
The boy pushes back once more, saying, "No, it has to be a video," to which the man answers once again, "It's not a video. It's real life." In an instant, the boy seems to understand. "Wow," he says. "I've never seen this before." The man urges him to look. "It's so close to the sun. Come on, no way," he says, as the moon's shadow totally envelops the sky.
Upworthy spoke with Rioboo, who shared how the boy was viewing the sky. "The child was looking to the eclipse with very specific sunglasses that just allowed him to see the sun," Rioboo said. "And that's why he actually thought it was a video."
Though she didn't talk to them afterward, she wasn't surprised that he felt that way. Even some adults had to question what they were seeing. "It was very surreal, to be honest," she added.
Though some in the Instagram comments seemed saddened that the child thought what they were seeing wasn't real, many adults pointed out potential reasons.
"To be fair, the eclipse glasses are weird. They darken everything in front of you, and you can only see the sun. I think a child might be forgiven for thinking it was a little video player or VR," one commenter said.
"It's simply impossible to imagine," Rosa Celiberti, a language teacher who watched from Spain with tears in her eyes, told The Associated Press. "No matter how many photos or videos you've seen, nothing comes even close to what it actually feels like."
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