Every total solar eclipse happening in our lifetime | Hacker News Reader

Every total solar eclipse happening in our lifetime

washingtonpost.com

125 pointsfmihaila29 comments

For the truly data-hungry, this NASA document (NASA Technical Publication TP-2009-214174) has every eclipse through the year 3000:

https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEpubs/5MKSE.html

Nice interactive map with lots of data for this year's eclipse: http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2017...

Click on the map to get a popup of info about the eclipse at that location.

> Patterns in how eclipses traverse the country mean that some areas, such as the Midwest, get to see many more than others.

This statement is shown graphically in the image of the paths of all eclipses since 2000 BC:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/eclipse/img...

This is counterintuitive to me. I understand that the paths are distributed in similar angular arcs across the country because of the relative motion of the planets, but I do not understand why these should occur at any particular longitude.

Given the relatively few eclipses represented, could the inequality in this distribution be purely random?

Does anyone know?

I like the information on the most and least solar eclipsed places in the United States. I imagine there is a spot on earth that has received more though?

There's a neat Wikipedia map of eclipse tracks for the last 1000 years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse#/media/File:Tota...

Someone who can math may be able to answer your actual question. My guess is that polar regions are more eclipsed because the lunar shadow subtends a greater area there.

As the visualization doesn't let you zoom in to check the precise path, I found a tool[1] where you pick the eclipse from a dropdown, give it your latitude/longitude, and it calculates partial and totality information. Helped me to confirm that I'll be having 100% totality in 2024.

[1] http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/SolarEclipseCalc_Diagra...

I remember when the 1999 solar eclipse passed over Austria -- there was a huge hype over it. Newspapers came with cardboard glasses for looking at the eclipse.

I was a bit underwhelmed when it actually happened. The sun turned into a circle, and then it turned back into a disk. But I remember that I was surprised that crickets started chirping (which is obvious in retrospect -- they though it was dusk)

Stupid question: did you remove your glasses during totality? The Sun's corona should have shone very brightly (relatively). If you didn't take off your eclipse glasses, or were just outside the edge of totality I can see how someone would make the claim you are. But the corona isn't a circle.

I think I did remove the glasses, but I'm not sure.

But I checked, and you are right, it looks like I was just outside the edge of totality according to this website [1].

It doesn't look like I'll have a second chance to see one nearby :(

[1](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/@2762558?iso=19990811)

The next total eclipse in USA is on Monday August 21, 2017.

It starts on the Oregon coast at ~9AM PT and finishes on the South Carolina coast at ~3PM ET.

More info here: https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/eclipse-who-what-where-when-and...

Also, the greatest duration of the eclipse will be in Southern Illinois at 2m 4.1s in length.

Small typo in your comment. Should be 2m 41s.

This is a great visualization. Looks like the next eclipse for those in the continental US is in 2024, after the one this summer. Although it will mainly sweep across the eastern half of the country.

The pacific ocean will be hosting a lot of eclipse action (likely with few human observers), perhaps unsurprisingly.

Man, I'm tempted to head south a bit to see the 2017-08-21 Great American Eclipse.

If you do, watch out for traffic conditions, which may be horrendous depending on where you want to go on that day [1]

[1] "How much traffic on eclipse day?" http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/traffic-congestion-...

For those in the US are you planning on attending any particular eclipse totality event / festival?

We're making our own somewhere in Idaho, which is the closest area of totality (less than 4h drive). All the hotels, camp grounds, etc were sold out months ago so it'll be a "pull off onto the shoulder and set up camp" type thing.

Order your eclipse glasses and 16 stop filter for your camera now before Amazon sells out..

What's a 16 stop filter. I just purchased a cheap solar filter sheet and uv filter for a gopro, seems to work okay.

I would spend those precious minutes actually looking at the eclipse, not taking photos that are identical to all the other eclipse photos.

Agree, but since I didn't have a solar ND filter, and they're likely to sell out, I figured may as well get one now.

"16 stops" means a ratio of 2^16, so in this case a 16-stop filter is a filter that allows 1/2^16 = 0.0015% of the light through. This is presumably "neutral density" that blocks all colours of light equally and has no other effect.

Which library was used to produce the visualization? The globe looks really nice.

D3 (https://d3js.org). It's actually not terribly hard to do: https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/7ea1dde508cec6d2d95306f92642bc4...

Wow, where can I find exact locations for South America? Or even better, for any place in the world?

Realize this is venting, but it is super frustrating to follow links only to be greeted with "Subscribe to the National Digital Edition" blocking pages.

I do use adblock plus...are there some Chrome console options I can use to block the script that hides the content?

Consider using uBlock Origin instead.

uBlock Origin + EFF's Privacy Badger have resulted in a really quiet browsing experience.

use uBlock origin by gorhill, never use adblock plus. It's slows your browser down and it only blocks ads to serve it's own

I'm using uMatrix. Block the domain js.washingtonpost.com and you won't see the subcription screen. On the other hand, I didn't see the neat visualizations other posters are complimenting, either.

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