Jay M. Pasachoff, a professor of astronomy at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. is the chairman of the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group on Eclipses. He was on Easter Island in Chile for Sunday’s solar eclipse. He offers this in the Sunday NY Times:

We’re here for the science, yes. But there’s also the primal thrill this astronomical light show always brings — the perfect alignment, in solemn darkness, of the celestial bodies that mean most to us.