2024 Total Solar Eclipse

Of all the amazing phenomena of the natural world, total solar eclipses are my favorite. They are as rare — around one every 100 years at any particular location — as they are spectacular and awe inspiring. The continental US saw a total solar eclipse on August 21st, 2017. (Click on the image above to see the path of totality.)

On August 21st, 2017, I drove to Carbondale, IL, from Chicago, IL to catch that one. Carbondale is called the “Solar Eclipse capital of the US” because amazingly the path of the next total solar eclipse of April 8th, 2024 will also pass through that town in southern Illinois.

I was fortunate that Carbondale was located on the stretch with the greatest duration, 2 minutes 40 seconds, of totality. It is hard for me to convey the excitement and wonder that I felt. Here’s a bit from a Sky & Telescope article:

Few have witnessed a total solar eclipse, yet it is the most dramatic celestial event you’ll ever see. During totality, with the Sun’s brilliant disk fully covered, the sky turns dark (like very deep twilight) and the brightest planets and stars become visible. Animals become quiet, birds roost, and the temperature drops noticeably.

Though I had planned to watch the 2024 event from Dallas TX (or Waco TX), I am nowhere close to those towns today. The next best thing is to watch it live telecast on the web. So here’s the deal. First, watch this video by the always excellent Curious Droid.

Then go on over to the Skyshow.tv site to watch their planned live coverage of the solar eclipse.

For viewers in India, google says the eclipse will begin at 9:12 pm on April 8 Indian Standard Time and end at 2:22 AM IST April 9th. Totality will start at 10:08 pm IST.

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A little bit about eclipses. Fundamentally, they are the shadow one celestial object on another. The earth’s shadow on the moon is a lunar eclipse; the shadow of the moon on the earth a solar eclipse. Lunar eclipses are visible from anywhere on earth where the moon is visible. They are rather common.

Solar eclipses are rarer than lunar eclipses, and are only visible on very narrow bits of the earth — the moon’s shadow is not very large.

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Here’s the piece I wrote about the 2017 total solar eclipse. Excerpt:

Here’s Freeman Dyson describing a total solar eclipse. The beauty and strangeness of it. The audio below is excerpted from his interview in the series “Of Beauty and Consolation“.