This Day in the Future -- August 21, 2017: Total Solar Eclipse
On this day exactly ten years from now, a total solar eclipse will be visible over much of the continental United States. The eclipse's path will start in the Pacific ocean, and will pass through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, the northeast corner of Kansas, Missouri, southern Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, northeast Georgia, and the Carolinas. Millions of people will be able to see the eclipse, assuming the weather holds out.
The duration of the eclipse will be about two and a half minutes at maximum, at the center line. The width of visibility will be about 115 km.
This will be the first total eclipse to pass over any part of the United States since 1991, when a total eclipse passed over Hawaii. Plan your trip now! (Ten years into the future is not as far out as you think...)
References:
USA Total Solar Eclipse 2017, everything you need to know to plan to see the eclipse, including links to details maps, courtesy of Dan McGlaun
Hermit Eclipse: Total Solar Eclipse: August 21 2017 (with some excellent maps)
Path of Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 Aug 21 (a NASA website with coordinates, which links to a map of the globe with the eclipse's path)
Wikipedia: Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017
The duration of the eclipse will be about two and a half minutes at maximum, at the center line. The width of visibility will be about 115 km.
This will be the first total eclipse to pass over any part of the United States since 1991, when a total eclipse passed over Hawaii. Plan your trip now! (Ten years into the future is not as far out as you think...)
References:
USA Total Solar Eclipse 2017, everything you need to know to plan to see the eclipse, including links to details maps, courtesy of Dan McGlaun
Hermit Eclipse: Total Solar Eclipse: August 21 2017 (with some excellent maps)
Path of Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 Aug 21 (a NASA website with coordinates, which links to a map of the globe with the eclipse's path)
Wikipedia: Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017
the other one on March 3 was at a good time, visible right after shabbos.
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/OH/OH2007.html
What struck me the most was how still the world was in those few minutes. It wasn't completely dark -- it was more like a twilight, only not really. All the birds went silent, as did the insects. I swear even the breeze stopped. (I don't think it did, but then, I wasn't paying as much attention to it.)
Then the sun came back out, nature continued on with its gossip, leaving me still bemused and amazed by the experience.
Evidently, there is also such an animal as a "hybrid" eclipse, which appears as an annular eclipse to some areas, a total eclipse to other areas and a partial eclipse to the largest area. Perhaps that is what I saw, and was in the right place to see it as a total elipse?
See here:
See http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEgoogle/SEgoogle1951/ASE1994google.html
for the path.
This is indeed the eclipse I meant - so I have yet to see a *total* eclipse. That said, I still wonder if it was a hybrid -- I wasn't on the center path, but almost midway between center and northern edge, a little to the center side.
What I experienced certainly matches all the descriptions of a total.
YES! 47 years later, I'll finally get to see a total solar eclipse!
Some may recall the total solar eclipse of March 1970, which basically has a totality path up the east coast of the US. I was then 9, a major space nut, and living around 75 miles from the totality zone. My father promised to take me, but, as I didn't know at the time, he'd been diagnosed with cancer the previous summer and the morning of eclipse day turned out to be one of his bad days. So he couldn't take me, and my mother wouldn't because she wanted to take care of him. So I only got to see a near total eclipse via pinhole devices and the like and what was shown on television.
Assuming predictions of decent weather, I'll almost have to go to the Carolinas to view this one.