The Corona

Tomorrow, April 6, 2026, four people will see something that only 28 pairs of eyes in all of human history have ever witnessed.

During their lunar flyby, the Artemis II crew will watch the sun disappear behind the edge of the moon. And in the moment when that blinding light is blocked — the corona appears. The halo surrounding the sun, normally invisible in its own glare. A ring of plasma. Millions of degrees hot. Usually drowned out by the very thing it surrounds.

28 humans have ever seen it like this. Apollo astronauts. Now four more.

What keeps me thinking about this: that view has nothing to do with attention.

I often return to Simone Weil’s idea of attention — the waiting kind, the receptive kind, the kind that doesn’t impose itself. As if pure openness could expand what you see. That’s true for many things.

Not this one.

The most attentive person on Earth’s surface would never see the corona this way — not without a total solar eclipse happening to coincide with the right location. The Artemis crew doesn’t see it because they’re more attentive than others. They see it because they’re in the right orbit, on the right day, with the right alignment.

Position as the precondition for perception.

This sounds almost obvious. But I don’t think it is.

There are things in the world that only become visible from certain positions. Not because others are inattentive or unintelligent — but because they haven’t reached the orbit from which those things can be seen.

Some positions are chosen: you decide to learn a language, immerse yourself in another culture, change professions. Every new position opens angles that were invisible before.

Some positions are given: through origin, accident, loss, luck. No one chooses their first orbit.

And some positions are rare. Thirty-two people in history — that’s an extreme scarcity of vantage point.

I sometimes wonder about the coronas I don’t know I’m missing.

Not from lack of attention. But because I haven’t yet reached the orbit from which they become visible. That’s not a criticism — it’s geometry. And it’s an invitation: what would I need to become, or learn, or experience, to arrive at a different position?

Tomorrow, somewhere between Earth and the moon, four people will briefly enter an orbit almost no one has ever known.

I’ll be thinking of them.