Athens amateur astronomer has chased eclipses across the nation and throughout the world
When the moon begets an eclipse of the sun come April 8, Maurice Snook of Athens plans to stand in the darkening shadow of its crawling pace.
What will happen? Snook should know. He’s haunted that shadow many times.
Snook’s trip to the dark path comes as no surprise to those Athenians who know him. He is a man whose love of astronomy is widely known from his numerous talks on various celestial events he has brought to schools and libraries.
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On April 8, Snook may be hundreds of miles away trolling the total eclipse, but there will be places in Athens where a partial eclipse can be seen with the help of others. The eclipse of the sun in Athens will be at 80% leaving a lot of sunshine.
During the time after 1 p.m., Snook’s wife, Caren Snook, will have a telescope at the Athens-Clarke County Library on Baxter Street in Athens and amateur astronomer Tony Tolbert will anchor his telescope at the Winterville Library on Marigold Lane.
Snook warns that suitable eclipse glasses must be worn and there are a limited supply at the library.
If someone actually wants to visit the path of totality, Snook said the internet has plenty of resources.
“There are maps you can google. You zoom in on the map and on some you can click any place and the map gives you everything about the eclipse. Where it starts, the maximum of totality, when the eclipse will end. There are dozens of them,” he said.
Snook was a student at Penn State University in 1970, when he traveled to view his first total eclipse in Williamston, N.C., near the coast. A black and white picture he took was used on the cover of Sky & Telescope magazine.
In 1973, he journeyed to the African nation of Mauritania for the total eclipse. He and his other companions, flew first into the country of Senegal then boarded the plane to a remote mining community in the Sahara Desert.
“The pilot walked out on the wing and stuck a stick into the fuel tank to make sure he had enough fuel,” he said. “We felt like we had stepped into the pages of the National Geographic. It was an adventure.”
A picture he took of the eclipse from this location was used in World Book Encyclopedia from 1975 to 2009 under the section providing information on eclipses.
In the recent 2017 eclipse, Snook traveled to Belton, S.C. There in a field beside a rural church outside the town, he viewed the eclipse with several others.
“There was a family touring the United States from Spain and they ended up there,” he recalled.
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Snook said he enjoys explaining such lunar events to the curious. And this includes how eclipses have affected events in history.
For his 2024 trip, he plans to visit his sister in Kansas City, then depending on the weather he will head to a place likely in Missouri, but if the weather forecast isn’t right he’ll go further south probably to a location in Arkansas.
But wherever he lands, Snook will return to Athens with more memories of an eclipse of the sun.
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Athens resident Maurice Snook is a veteran of the solar eclipse
