A total solar eclipse will sweep across North America on Monday, April 8, offering a spectacle for tens of millions of people who live in its path and others who will travel to see it.
A solar eclipse occurs during the new moon phase, when the moon passes between Earth and the sun, casting a shadow on Earth and totally or partially blocking our view of the sun. While an average of two solar eclipses happen every year, a particular spot on Earth is only in the path of totality every 375 years on average, Astronomy reported.
“Eclipses themselves aren’t rare, it’s just eclipses at your house are pretty rare,” John Gianforte, director of the University of New Hampshire Observatory, tells TIME. If you stay in your hometown, you may never spot one, but if you’re willing to travel, you can witness multiple. Gianforte has seen five eclipses and intends to travel to Texas this year, where the weather prospects are better.
One fun part of experiencing an eclipse can be watching the people around you. “They may yell, they scream, they cry, they hug each other, and that’s because it’s such an amazingly beautiful event,” Gianforte, who also serves as an extension associate professor of space science education, notes. “Everyone should see at least one in their life, because they’re just so spectacular. They are emotion-evoking natural events.”
Here are 10 surprising facts about the science behind the phenomenon, what makes 2024’s solar eclipse unique, and what to expect.
The total eclipse starts in the Pacific Ocean and ends in the Atlantic
The darker, inner shadow the moon casts is called the umbra, in which you can see a rarer total eclipse. The outer, lighter second shadow is called the penumbra, under which you will see a partial eclipse visible in more locations.
The total eclipse starts at 12:39 p.m. Eastern Time, a bit more than 620 miles south of the Republic of Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean, according to Astronomy. The umbra remains in contact with…
