Big year for… the cosmos

A total solar eclipse. Northern lights visible as far away as southern Quebec. Until a comet came (discreetly) to make its rounds. The year 2024 will have been the year when we rolled our eyes to the sky.

If you ask me to describe the year that is ending in astronomy, the adjectives rush through my head. Magic? Exceptional? Upsetting? However, it is a completely different term that Olivier Hernandez, director of the Montreal Planetarium, spontaneously uses.

“It’s been an exhausting year,” he says when I call him to talk about the big events of 2024.

I burst out laughing. It is true that he cannot simply enjoy the celestial spectacles. He must comment on them, explain them, organize events to benefit the population.

On April 8, we felt Quebec vibrate in unison for the total solar eclipse, a phenomenon that only passes over our home once a century.

Young and old put on these funny glasses with cardboard frames to watch the Sun being slowly eaten away by the Moon. Then the highlight of the show came, masterfully. The temperature dropped. Darkness set in. And we contemplated this crazy, unforgettable vision of the Sun becoming a thin, shiny ring with black holes.

Olivier Hernandez recalls how lucky we were. At this time of year, the chance of good weather is just 30%.

“It was a really wonderful day,” said Mr. Hernandez, who helped organize the huge gathering at Jean-Drapeau Park that attracted 100,000 people.

We thought we had had our fill of emotions after the eclipse. But a month later, the sky had another number in store for us: the Northern Lights visible as far away as southern Quebec.

As much as the eclipse had been announced and prepared for a long time, this second spectacle took us by surprise. That's my case, anyway. That evening, I had no plans. On a whim, I booked a car and decided to drive north to get away from the bright lights of Montreal. The only one who was willing to follow me was my 13 year old daughter.

We took a random exit, near Sainte-Agathe. We found a picnic table and went to bed. For 45 minutes, I regretted this impulsive outing which seemed doomed to failure.

“There are even clouds moving in,” I said to my daughter, annoyed. Then we saw these “clouds” stretch, dance, before turning pink and green. An hour later, we were still there, completely mesmerized — and, in my case at least, moved to the core. These were my first dawns.

Olivier Hernandez noted the immediate enthusiasm of the population.

“The aurora is something absolutely incredible. It can arouse really strong emotions and people have been very sensitive to it. I think social media has a lot to do with it and new phones help take great pictures. Before, to take photos of auroras, you had to be an outstanding photographer,” he points out.

In October, new auroras once again enlivened the sky. And it's not over: Olivier Hernandez recalls that the peak of solar activity should only peak next February.

“We are going to see it very intensely for another year or two. It’s going to be exceptional,” he announces.

He notes that the eclipse and the aurora have triggered a great curiosity among Quebecers.

“Once we have seen phenomena like an eclipse or an aurora, the first reflex that comes is often: why are we seeing this, how does it work? In addition to seeing that it is beautiful, we want to understand,” adds Mr. Hernandez.

At a time when misinformation abounds, this interest in science seems particularly welcome to me.

The director of the Planetarium notes that we were also able to see two lunar eclipses this year (a number which is not exceptional). In October, comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS also passed through the sky, but the spectacle was not as scintillating as hoped.

“With comets, it’s always heads or tails,” explains Mr. Hernandez. They owe their brilliance to their passage near the Sun. But because they are blocks of dirty snow, they can easily break into several pieces. It lost a few pieces and the comet that we hoped to see very bright was a bit of a flop for the eyes. With binoculars, you could see the spectacle, but with the naked eye, it was really too limited. »

It also points to an event that occurred in 2024 which had completely escaped my attention. In January, a meteorite called 2024 BX1 lit up the sky over Berlin. Thanks to a network of cameras, researchers were able to estimate where it fell and managed to recover it.

Olivier Hernandez is right to speak of phenomena “bigger than us”. The power of celestial spectacles is in fact to provide us with rare opportunities to change scale, to see beyond what governs our lives.

This change in perspective can make us feel small — which is not a bad thing considering that humility is not the greatest human quality.

In 2024, they will in any case have succeeded in dazzling us. And to create rare and precious collective happenings around natural phenomena.

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