As photographers with long lenses set up along Water Street on the shoreline of Passamaquoddy Bay in Saint Andrews by the Sea, New Brunswick, Canada, they all had the same thing on their LCD screens. Not an eclipsed sunrise but flocks of sandpipers and other shorebirds flocking against a reddening dawn sky.
The low horizon, the unincorporated community of L’Etete across the bay, began to glow as sunrise neared. It was low tide, and the stunning colors were reflected in puddles in the bay. Then, it was time for the sun to appear. “We could just see the trees lighting up like little horns, and the sky was lightening,” said astronomy author and photographer Alan Dyer. “I thought we were going to see it burn through the cloud — and then it just faded out.”
Eclipse chasers, photographers, and astronomers had descended upon this historic seaside town, knowing that clear sightlines over the water would maximize the view. Unlike an eclipse at midday, where the sun is high and powerful, this event offered an unusual opportunity to see the distorted, refracted solar horns emerge through Earth’s thickest atmospheric layers at the horizon.
For those positioned precisely along the sunrise line, the sun was to rise as a ‘smiley face,’ with the crescent oriented horizontally. This alignment, rarely observed on land, made Saint Andrews a prime location for eclipse chasers after the rare sight.
No such sight was had. For the delegates at Sky Experience II at the Algonquin Resort in this seaside town in southwest New Brunswick, it was a bitter disappointment, but on the day, not an unexpected one. We were set to have the sun rising at 7:15 a.m. ADT, while 86% eclipsed, was a little north of due east. Although there was cloud cover across almost the entire sky, the horizon was clear to the northwest and north — and almost around the sunrise point. We missed seeing something stunning by just a few degrees.
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Whenever I come to an eclipse, I feel like a voyeur at someone else’s big event. After all, to have a unique view of an eclipse visible from where you live is something really rare and unique. For the people who organized this event — notably passionate astrotourism expert Stéphane Picard at Cliff Valley Astronomy — missing out on a view of this eclipse was tough. “We were so close,” he said, crestfallen, after the eclipse. “The horizon was lighting up.” Was I sad for him and the community? Yes, of course — but maybe not as much as I could be. After all, precisely one lunar year earlier (12 orbits of Earth by the moon), this region had enjoyed over three minutes of totality during an exquisitely clear total solar eclipse!
Besides, Picard had made sure it would be a memorable experience, no matter the weather. “Astronomy involves looking at objects beyond the horizon, while astrotourism focuses on creating unique experiences within the horizon,” he said later that day during a lecture. To that end, Picard has invited members of the indigenous community to attend and share stories — and a lot more.
About half an hour before the clouded-out sunrise, while the horizon was bright orange, two elders of the Beaver clan in the Mi’gmaq community in the Pabineau First Nation — Constance and Cynthia Sewell — performed a smudging, a ceremony involving the burning of sage followed by a song to welcome the dawn. The song entranced a crowd of eclipse chasers while the birds flocked and some passing dogs barked. “For us, the eclipse is like a renewal, a restart and a rebalance in our lives and in the world,” said Constance Sewell, who noted how different an experience it was to April 8, 2024’s total solar eclipse, which she also experienced. “I was surprised this morning. The birds were flying all around, and the dogs were reacting — but at the last eclipse, there was a total calm.”
So why did we go to Saint Andrews, and why did we stay? “People need places to gather. We can go to some random road in the middle of New Brunswick and observe alone, but it’s not fun,” said Jenna Hinds, Executive Director at The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC), after the eclipse. She had flown in from Toronto for the occasion to be with others from the RASC. “We wanted to see the eclipse together.”
For Saint Andrews and New Brunswick, the next partial solar eclipse will occur here on August 12, 2026, when a 26% eclipsed sun will appear high above the Bay of Fundy after lunch. The next total solar eclipse isn’t until May 1, 2079, when a partial eclipse will begin at the precise moment of sunrise and build to a totality lasting 1 minute 32 seconds.
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