【Kali Hansa】

The Kali HansaSolar Eclipse is the brightest dark spot in an otherwise dismal year.

Perhaps that’s why I’m acting like an overgrown child, obsessing about the moment, rescheduling my day just so I can spend Monday afternoon witnessing and recording this rare event.

I’m one of the few Mashableemployees old enough to remember the last total solar eclipse viewable across the U.S. That was in 1979, two years before the launch of the first Space Shuttle and an epoch before a world of technological advances transformed how we could experience a Solar Eclipse.

Today, we can stream it online and follow countless social feeds that will record it for us. Yet, there’s still nothing quite like the first-person experience, and even that has, thanks to technology, changed.

Consumer camera technology, for instance, has come a long way. In 1979, there were digital cameras and no 84x optical zooms for amateur photographers like me.

This week, people have been freaking out about buying faulty solar eclipse glasses. In 1979, there were no mass-produced, widely available, and safe, solar lenses glasses. If you wanted to watch the eclipse, you made a camera obscura and then tried to hold it still so you could see the tiny refracted projection of what was happening millions of miles away.

Early celestial and lunar events have helped shape my mini obsession with space, the stars and the moon. If you follow my Instagram, you know my moon mania. I’ve invested in and tested ever larger (or longer) lenses, hoping to capture some heretofore unnoticed moon blemish.

View this post on Instagram

The solar eclipse, though, is like the World Series of moon pics, even though the moon will be entirely in the dark, just a black disk skating across the face of the sun.

I’ve spent weeks collecting equipment and researching how to photograph the eclipse, and a fair amount of time worrying that I could accidentally fry my retinas and/or my camera’s sensor. I believe both are protected, but you never know.

As I prepare, I’m aware, like someone entering an empty auditorium and then watching it fill up around him, of the millions of other people around this fractured country doing the same.

This is the kind of universal event that easily unites. Aside from the idiot flat-Earthers, there’s no disagreement about what is happening, where and when to see it or the precautions you take to avoid going blind.

No one will review the Solar Eclipses like the latest episode of Game of Thrones. It’s not some over-produced, subjective piece of art. It’s an over-hyped global event that could easily garner a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Republicans won't come out denouncing it. Donald Trump can't claim it as his own handiwork, and Democrats might simply enjoy it. It's the ultimate apolitical event.

Basically, the Solar Eclipse is the rare thing these days that we can just like.

Still, there is stress. The entire experience will last an hour or so with a brief minute of 71% totality for me. I changed the settings on my camera hours ago and have a plan to shoot remotely, but with so little time to catch the spectacle, I worry that a single tech glitch could result in garbage photos.

I have this one chance. Across the country, especially along that exquisite band of totality that will sadly miss me, there will be millions of people with a singularity of purpose. I imagine that people of all races, creeds, religions and political affiliations will be shoulder-to-shoulder, shielded eyes cast skyward.

It’s a hopeful act, embracing and recording a once-in-a-life time event that’s far beyond human control. A rare moment when we can experience and react without prejudice. A miracle of science, space and fact.

Part of me will be celebrating this communal moment, imaging how, for just a few hours, were all one with the universe and understanding, however briefly, that we’re just a dot in the universe, relying on the dispassionate, brilliant gaze of our own star for light and life and how that precious connection can be broken, for one beautiful moment, by something greater than us.

It’s humbling and encouraging. I’d love it to be a Solar Eclipse reset for our earthbound existence.

In the meantime, I will be freaking the heck out about getting just one, awesome photo. Wish me luck.