Words, pictures, videos don’t do it justice. I drove across the country for the one in 2017 and it was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. Sacrificing people on top of a pyramid isn’t my preference but i kinda understand where the aztecs/mel gibson were coming from. For real though totality is like a divine searing hole opening in the sky that connects you to cosmic ancient human experience even if just for a few moments. The moon is an actual giant thing falling toward us in perpetuity and never is it more tangibly understandable as such than when it falls literally perfectly in front of the fucking sun. Streamers of plasma millions of miles long whipping out around the black disc of the moon. Undulating liquid-like shadow ripples called shadow bands appear on the actual ground, it’s like standing on the beach looking down as a wave washes back out to sea but the beach is the planet on which all life lives and dies and the wave is the infinity of outer space, and you barely even hear about them because the eclipse itself is just that much more spectacular. For most people in the united states, this is the last chance they’ll have to see it in their lifetimes. my bad actually there’s another couple chances in 2044/2045, but still.
From what we currently know about the universe, it is very very rare to have a moon the size of ours that can eclipse the view of our sun.
If we were part of an interstellar society, aliens from other systems would travel to Earth to view the eclipse.
And it won’t last forever. The Sun will expand in diameter, and the Moon will drift further from the Earth. According to Wikipedia:
Final totality
Total solar eclipses are seen on Earth because of a fortuitous combination of circumstances. Even on Earth, the diversity of eclipses familiar to people today is a temporary (on a geological time scale) phenomenon. Hundreds of millions of years in the past, the Moon was closer to the Earth and therefore apparently larger, so every solar eclipse was total or partial, and there were no annular eclipses. Due to tidal acceleration, the orbit of the Moon around the Earth becomes approximately 3.8 cm more distant each year. Millions of years in the future, the Moon will be too far away to fully occlude the Sun, and no total eclipses will occur. In the same timeframe, the Sun may become brighter, making it appear larger in size. Estimates of the time when the Moon will be unable to occlude the entire Sun when viewed from the Earth range between 650 million and 1.4 billion years in the future.
Those aliens better hurry up.
Hell yeah. If you are traveling, book a hotel room as soon as possible (you typically can cancel them 48 hours prior without any fees, but booking lets you lock in the current rate). Or find a campground or call up some relatives or something. Get creative. I traveled to see the one in 2017. We booked a room one year out at a normal rate. The day of, the cheapest rooms were like $400/night.
Shit was indescribable. Worth the 14 hour drive both ways.
Forget about hotels honestly, they’re already booked or going for insane money.
Depends on where you’re going. The strip of totality runs from western Mexico to New Brunswick. Austin, Dallas, Indianapolis, Niagra Falls, and Burlington might be booked, but there are many, many, many small towns along that path.
You also don’t necessarily need to see the eclipse FROM the place you’re staying. You can book a place to stay within an hour or two driving distance of the path. Depending on the weather (a complete dice roll), you might end up driving a couple hours even if you booked a place right in the path of the eclipse.
nice try, Nyarlathotep
https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/april-8-2024
Shit, it’s still going to be partial above Colorado. There’s one particular photo I really want to get during a total eclipse and they’ve yet to happen locally.
I saw the 2017 eclipse and it was really pretty and cool, it got super dark and all the bugs came out!!!
