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or a minute and a half, the Moon's shadow will transform the light and the landscape of Mallorca — and perhaps also the way we look at the sky. For much of the afternoon of August 12th, nothing extraordinary will seem to be happening on the island. The Sun will keep sinking toward the west and summer will carry on at its own pace. But at 7:38 PM, a shadow will slowly begin to take over the solar disk. During the first few minutes, you'll probably have to look closely to notice it. The Moon will keep gaining ground, and meanwhile the island will go on functioning like any other August afternoon. The difference will be in the light. Little by little it will lose intensity and start to feel strange, as if the colors had shifted in tone.
For 96 seconds, the sky will darken in the middle of sunset, and a light that normally stays hidden will appear around the disk. It will be just over a minute, but that will be enough for Mallorca to fall under the Moon's shadow. Then the Sun will reappear and the afternoon will continue toward the west. The island will look the same again — though those who looked up will know that, for an instant, it wasn't.
For Gaspar Juan Salom, who has spent more than forty years watching the sky, it won't be just another afternoon either. Juan Salom is a teacher, science communicator, member of the Seminari d'Astronomia (SPAAIS), and co-author of El nostre cel al llarg de l'any. Since 1983 he has observed the sky from a house between Puigpunyent and Galilea, where he built an astronomical dome next to an old tool shed. "The observatory is my home," he says. His relationship with astronomy began as a child, when his father taught him to recognize a few constellations. He continued exploring the sky, at first with little more than a pair of binoculars. Years afterward he would teach an astronomy workshop for young people for two decades, advising them to start the same way: without big investments, and with someone to help them understand what they were seeing.
