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Comment by willidiots | Hacker News Reader

If you're new to this: from experience during past eclipses, make sure you're in the area of totality. Our family was on the edge of that area for the last one and thought it'd be enough - it wasn't, as we sadly learned sitting in a slightly dim parking lot. You need to be right under the center of it to get the full experience.

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Just want to emphasize this. The difference between near-totality and totality is immense.

A partial eclipse is a crescent sun, similar to how our moon is a crescent much of the time. The crescent is shaped mildly differently due to the occlusion, but really after that novelty is gone, it's just daytime with a crescent sun.

A sky with a total solar eclipse is a new, third kind of sky that is neither like day or night. It's as different from those as they are from one another, and what you will feel seeing it will be as though you have lived your whole life during the nighgband are seeing a night sky with the milky way for the first time. If you have the opportunity, don't miss it.

The only thing this comic gets wrong is neglecting to mention the Y axis is a log scale. https://xkcd.com/1880/

Do you mean "in the path of totality" or "right under the center line?"

I live "in the path" and I've got friends nearby with rural spots to watch from.

Or: I can take a bit of a drive and find a spot to hang out pretty much directly under the center line, but they will be crowded and there isn't much of a practical way to avoid that.

The difference, according to maps, seems to be just a few seconds of total occlusion. Or is there more to it than that?

Aim for 80% inside the path. The couple extra seconds you'll gain from being dead center is usually not worth the hassle. clouds is your biggest enemy day of.

One small town near not too far away has its Main Street almost perfectly aligned with the path of totality -- just offset by a few hundred feet.

I'm absolutely sure that it is completely coincidental. And yet: It is also very alluring.

> I'm absolutely sure that it is completely coincidental.

In the same way that the city streets in DC coincidentally lay out to the mason's square and compass shape. The forfathers of this city were probably travellers from the future that knew the significance of this event, and laid out the entire city based on it. They just forgot to carry the one somewhere, and missed the alignment

Perhaps.

But do you really think the rather small city of Norwalk, Ohio was planned for a nearly-perfect alignment for the center of the 2024 NA total eclipse? (Feel free to look on the eclipse map of your choice -- I'm not trying to deep-link or screenshot that, and it would be beneficial to the viewer to be able to pan around. And it's easy to find: When panning around the eclipse map, Norwalk is about the only city directly on the center-line up North in Ohio.)

(That said: The alignment of Main Street to the center path of the 2024 eclipse in Norwalk might indeed be planned. Sandusky, Ohio is not far from there, and is said to have been designed around masonic symbols[a]. I don't discount the idea. And that's part of what makes it alluring to me, even though I tell myself that it must be a coincidence.)

a: https://freemasonry.bcy.ca/history/sandusky/sandusky.html

Here in Perth, Western Australia we have a few main streets aligned for the sunsets and sunrises. They get... very bright.

This happens in a lot of US cities with grid-planned streets, the most famous example probably being "Manhattanhenge": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanhenge

How bad are clouds though? Doesn't that just make it more dark?

Clouds ruin it. Seeing a black spot surrounded by pink whisps where the sun should be is the thing.

I viewed a partial eclipse in 2017 in Columbus, Ohio, through heavy clouds and whatever random communal eclipse-viewing glasses that someone handed me.

It was weird and spectacular, and absolutely worth spending some time (in a tightly time-tracked job) to go outside and have a good long look at: There was absolutely a crescent-shaped sun visible behind those clouds, and that is a thing that I will never forget.

I don't think it was a ruined experience at all, though I certainly hope that this next eclipse is a lot better for whatever viewing-point I decide to choose and I understand that a cloudless sky is ideal.

Totality is totality, whether you are in the direct center of the path or closer to the edge.

The difference is how long you will experience totality.

What’s the best way to find a location in the center of totality and also ideal weather conditions.

As for location, I’m finding the NASA map hard to use: https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/eclipses/n...

For the weather, I realize that clouds may pop up. And, I’m not sure how much I can rely of local / regional weather to tell me where, within a 4-5 hour radius, I should drive for best conditions.

Lining these two up (as well as handling traffic), will be difficult I imagine. For what it’s worth, I’ll be in Austin.

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From another comment: https://www.cleardarksky.com/ec/2024-04-08_eclipse_map.html

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