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SALT LAKE CITY — The weather forecast looks great for watching the eclipse of the Sun early Sunday evening. Thousands are expected to gather and watch along the Wasatch Front. But the real eclipse buffs will be heading South.
Call them eclipse chasers, eclipse addicts, eclipsomaniacs. You can call them anything you want, as long as you don't call them late for a solar eclipse.
These are a couple of guys with an eclipse problem. Every time the Moon is about to pass in front of the Sun, they have an irresistible urge to fly around the world, if necessary. Joe Bauman admits he's an eclipse addict.
"Oh, I definitely am. I'll go to any one I can afford," he said.
As for Patrick Wiggins, he once chartered a 737 to get to an eclipse and charged fellow fanatics $500 apiece to go along.
"Eclipses of the Sun, there's just something weird about them. The human psyche is just not used to watching the sun disappear in the daytime," Wiggins said.
Each of them has seen five total solar eclipses and watched the sky turn steely gray. "It's almost like a spooky color. And it gives some people, myself included, the willies," Wiggins said.
In a total eclipse birds go to roost and people burst into tears.
"Every time I've been to an eclipse, that's happened. People, if not crying, they're just shouting, and exclaiming," Wiggins said.
Utah's eclipse Sunday will be less spectacular; the Moon, slightly farther away, won't completely cover the Sun. Bauman snapped photos of a similar Ring of Fire eclipse in 1994 in New Mexico.
"It's going to be very interesting. It's going to be something that you'll remember and treasure and like a lot. But, it's not quite the same as seeing a total," he said. "The fancy part is that the moon is in the middle of the sun and you have this ring all the way around the Sun."
"It's a shocking thing. I enjoyed it a lot."
Wiggins emphasized that your eyes need protection any time you look at the Sun. "Sunglasses are not acceptable. You need these things that are made specifically for looking at the Sun," he said. "You can't worry about fashion sense or whatever. You're going to look geeky. But wear them."
If you want all the details about good places to watch in Northern Utah Sunday night and great places to watch in southern Utah, go to the Clark Planetarium's website. And cross your fingers for clear skies and low horizons. The eclipse wraps up just before sunset.
