Total solar eclipse passes over US

There’s a total solar eclipse somewhere on Earth once every 18 months or so. And whether it’s passing over a barren, ice-cragged coast of Antarctica, a remote African desert, or a lonely patch of ocean, you can be sure there will be an umbraphile — a shadow-loving eclipse chaser — there to see it.

Eclipse chasers are people who plan their lives around (and spend small fortunes on) eclipse travel. This year, of course, they’ll be joining millions of people in the United States to see the total solar eclipse on April 8.

For a mere hour and 33 minutes on Monday, the United States was the chosen place where the new moon’s shadow fell as it aligned with the sun.

This total solar eclipse wasn’t just a celestial event, it was a huge opportunity for science education and money-making that America seized with gusto. Towns, cities, planetariums, NASA, and businesses large and small planned for months if not years, and invested heavily to make it possible for people to watch and enjoy it.

WESTMINSTER, South Carolina — When I was a little kid, I loved the sky. I loved it for its bigness, for the endless feeling it evoked.

When you’re a kid, the daytime sky is like a movie screen. Clouds were characters caught in an epic, endless drama. The night sky was even grander: an eyepiece into the infinite; a great black canvas upon which to project light, imagination, and color.

Monday’s solar eclipse was truly an American experience, visible as a partial eclipse from all 50 states and as a total eclipse from a 70-mile-wide sliver of 14 states. While total solar eclipses occur somewhere on Earth about every 18 months, it has been 38 years since the last total solar eclipse passed through the United States, and 99 years since the last coast-to-coast eclipse.

And this eclipse was certainly historic. While it’s impossible to know exactly how many people saw it, the Associated Press is reporting that it was the most observed and most photographed eclipse in history. That squares with what Rick Fienberg of the American Astronomical Society predicted last week.

On Monday, millions of Americans will catch a glimpse of the total solar eclipse that will hurtle across America at about 2,000 miles per hour. It’s a tremendous visual spectacle that everyone from kids on iPhones to NASA’s top scientists will be documenting with photos and video. (For more on what scientists can learn about the sun by photographing an eclipse, read this piece by Vox’s Brian Resnick.)

For the towns and cities along the 70-mile-wide path of totality, which stretches from Oregon to South Carolina, the eclipse has also been a rare opportunity to attract thousands of visitors from around the world. Many communities have planned eclipse festivals, astronomy talks, science education, and special musical events (like Close Encounters of the Symphonic Kind in Casper, Wyoming, for instance) to celebrate.

ASHEVILLE, North Carolina — “Do you want to do something ethically challenging?” asks Queen Lady Passion. She’s smiling.

The solar eclipse, she reminds me, will be at its strongest at 2:38 pm. We have to be ready.

Monday’s solar eclipse may have united millions of Americans in staring (not directly) into the sun. But for corporations and those unable, or unwilling, to view the event itself, the payoff wasn’t in the sky but on Twitter.

Numerous brands tried to participate in the cosmic energy of the day by working themselves into the celebrations, with results ranging from awkward to acceptably savvy to hilarious.

Once upon on a time, Bonnie Tyler was singing about falling in love. But now, 34 years later, she’s atop the charts.

On Monday, a.k.a. solar eclipse day, Tyler’s song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” made its way to the top of the iTunes chart, displacing Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito.” USA Today reported:

President Donald Trump ignored the advice of scientists and public health officials around the country — not to mention his own daughter — and looked at the sun without special protective glasses during Monday’s solar eclipse.

Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and son Barron watched the eclipse from the White House’s Blue Room balcony. Although they were all armed with protective glasses, Trump looked up at the sun for a moment, prompting staffers to yell, “Don’t look!”

A case of a solar eclipse metaphor gone terribly, terribly wrong has become a conservative talking point about the left and racism.

Last week, the Atlantic reprinted a Democracy: A Journal of Ideas article, which attempted to make a hard-to-parse point about race in America in the context of the solar eclipse. The thesis of the article was that the regions experiencing the total eclipse are mostly inhabited by white people — and also America has a history of racism.

On August 21, a total solar eclipse will blaze through 20 national parks and nine national trails in its path of totality across the United States, which begins in Oregon and ends in South Carolina.

And those who were lucky enough to book campsites and hotels in time will be heading into these parks to experience it in gorgeous natural splendor.

Total solar eclipses like the one crossing America today are beautiful, but they’re tragically fleeting. Totality, when the sun is completely covered by the moon, lasts just a few minutes. And the whole thing — from the start of the partial eclipse to the end — takes just a few hours. The experience is sublime, but it’ll leave you wanting.

Here’s the good news: Total solar eclipses happen somewhere in the world every 18 months or so. That’s how long it takes for the specific conditions that create eclipses (the phases of the moon, the distance of the moon to Earth, and the moon crossing the plane of Earth’s orbit) to line back up.

Today, a solar eclipse will cut across the entire United States. And wherever you are, you will be able to see it. Even though the “totality” — the area where the sun is completely blocked out by the moon — is only 70 miles wide, the whole country (even Alaska and Hawaii) will experience a partial eclipse.

This is what you’ll see, and the time you’ll see it, in your zip code.

Here at Vox, we are thoroughly convinced the August 21 total solar eclipse will be worth the hype. As we’ve learned from astronomers, astrophysicists, and eclipse-chasing enthusiasts, in the 70-mile-wide band of totality from Oregon to South Carolina, the moon will completely block out the sun, day will turn to twilight, stars and planets will appear, and the sun’s ethereal atmosphere will dance in the sky. Many people say standing beneath a total solar eclipse is a life-changing experience. We’re pumped.

(Don’t worry, the rest of the country will see a partial eclipse, which will be cool too.)

On Monday, August 21, the moon will come between the sun and the Earth at just the right moment for a total solar eclipse to occur across the United States. The path of totality is only 70 miles wide, but the rest of the country will see a partial eclipse. Vox has a terrific interactive showing how much you’ll be able to see depending on your zip code.

As several veteran eclipse chasers have told us, a total solar eclipse can be an awe-inspiring, life-changing event. But not everyone can travel to experience totality on Monday.

The English word eclipse comes from the Greek ἔκλειψις, ekleípō: disappearance, abandonment. A solar eclipse is the moment in which the sun disappears, abandoning the world. It’s like being forsaken by a god.

The ancient Greeks thought of a solar eclipse as an act of abandonment, a terrible crisis and an existential threat. It meant that the king would fall, that terrible misfortunes would rain down on the world, or that demons had swallowed the sun.

The moment the moon covers the sun in a total solar eclipse, everything goes silent. Then, “you hear people saying: ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ and they just say it for three minutes,” says Fred Espenak, an astrophysicist who has been to 27 total solar eclipses. “Others are totally speechless. Some people might even be praying. Others, just tears of joy running down their cheek.”

Huge crowds are expected for the total solar eclipse that will cut a path across the United States on August 21, and for many, it’s sure to be a powerful communal experience. “For a brief minute, everybody is doing the same thing at the same time,” Rhonda Coleman, an eclipse chaser from Bend, Oregon says. “It makes you feel a part of the Earth. It makes you feel a part of the cosmos. It makes you feel a part of every single person you’re standing there with. Just for a brief time, we’re not separate, we’re all the same.”

The total solar eclipse passing over the United States on August 21 is going to be disruptive. Authorities are predicting huge traffic jams, strained cellphone networks, and insufficient bathrooms for the masses driving to the center of the show.

But there’s another disruption that will be brought on by the eclipse: power.

If you’re going to stare at the sun during the upcoming solar eclipse on August 21, you need eye protection. Unfortunately, obtaining eye protection in recent days has become a major pain. Namely:

Still, there’s no excuse for not protecting your eyes if you’re going to admire the partial phases of the eclipse, when the sun is not totally covered by the moon. None at all. You either have to find some eclipse glasses, breaking out some very dark welder’s glasses, or use an indirect method — like a pinhole projector (more on that below) — to view the eclipse. Because if you don’t, you risk permanent eye damage.

A total solar eclipse is a rare occasion to marvel at nature, contemplate life, and think about the cosmos. But the total solar eclipse on August 21 will also be an important moment to gather scientific data about the sun as the moon covers it completely for an hour-and-a-half journey across the United States.

To this day, many aspects of the sun remain a mystery: What causes solar flares, when massive amounts of energy and plasma are ejected from the sun? Why is the corona, the solar atmosphere, actually hotter than the surface?

On August 21, a total solar eclipse will cut through the entire continental United States. It’s going to be awesome. If you’re in the bull’s eye center of the moon’s shadow, known as the totality, the sky will go dark for a few minutes in the middle of the day. The temperature will drop, stars will appear, and birds will become confused and start chirping their nighttime songs. And it’s all because of a cosmic coincidence: From the Earth, both the moon and sun will appear to be roughly the same size.

At just 70 miles wide, the path of the totality is narrow. For the rest of the US beyond this slim band, anywhere from 20 to 99 percent of the sun will be covered by the moon. But everyone in every state (even Hawaii and Alaska!) who’s awake and outside will get to experience it. You won’t want to miss it.

How’s this for a long-range forecast?

NASA knows that on January 27, in the year 2837, a total solar eclipse will pass over southern Mexico. If the onlookers (our descendants or our conquering alien overlords) are lucky, and it’s a clear day, they’ll see something like this — a show that’s captivated people on this planet for as long as we’ve been on Earth.

Storytellers have long fixated on the awe-inspiring phenomenon that is a total solar eclipse. From ancient myths about dragons eating the sun to hundreds of more contemporary depictions — in Stephen King’s 1992 novel Dolores Claiborne, the 2006 film Apocalypto, or any number of sci-fi TV shows — eclipses have been so present in fiction that they can be traced through literally thousands of years’ worth of storytelling, across a wide range of mediums.

Mapped across history, these depictions can provide insight into everything from a writer’s cultural identity to how scientific advancement changed the way humans interpret natural phenomena. But how accurate are they? How are solar eclipses portrayed differently across different mediums? What kinds of narrative trends have they been part of?

On August 21, for the first time in 38 years, a total solar eclipse will cut through the continental United States. It’s going to be awesome. If you’re in the bull’s eye center of the moon’s shadow known as the totality — the sky will go dark for a few minutes in the middle of the day, stars will appear, birds will become confused and start chirping their nighttime songs. And it’s all because of a cosmic coincidence: From the Earth, both the moon and sun appear to be roughly the same size.

Most of the country will see a partial eclipse, which is also cool. But for the complete show, you need to be in the 70-mile wide path of the totality. Luckily NASA has mapped the path of the totality to an absurd detail.

The final countdown has begun to watch the rare solar eclipse, which will cut across the US on August 21. And if you want to experience it in some of the most beautiful spots in the country, you’re in luck: There are 20 national parks and nine national trails in the path of the totality.​

Artist and educator Tyler Nordgren, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Redlands in California​, saw an opportunity to use the National Parks to educate people about space science.