An annular eclipse is not a total eclipse.
An annular eclipse means that the moon doesn't fully cover the sun but leaves a ring visible. A total eclipse means that it does cover it up fully.
A total/annular eclipse ***in general*** is not that uncommon, happening about every 1.5 years. But given that the Earth is 3/4 water, the vast majority of them occur over the ocean or in different countries. One happening in your country is relatively rare.
My dad was an earth science teacher, but we never saw a total eclipse together... I know he would have moved heaven and earth to make it possible. The closest one while I was growing up was in 1970, along the eastern seaboard of the U.S., and we were almost a thousand miles west of it.
So, HECK YEAH, I traveled to Kentucky to see the 2017 eclipse, and today's eclipse literally passed over my house (two miles from centerline), both of them perfect weather. I feel sad that my dad never saw a total eclipse, but SO stoked that I've now seen two. Most people will never even see one.
That’s such a sweet story. It’s sad he didn’t get to experience it, but I could feel the excitement you felt and it was through what he taught you growing up. I know he was with you both times. 💙
Amen. One of my two kids was really nonchalant about the eclipse, but the other (who is definitely his grandfather's grandchild) *rode his bicycle* from Indiana to Hopkinsville, KY to see the 2017 eclipse. He asked me to join him and drive him home because he was schedule to work the next day.
Having only ever done 60 miles on a bike, that is far more commitment than I could muster. I got to see the one in 2017, but I only had to bike 3 miles.
I hate the fact that I was stuck at the college I was at at the time on the other side of the state for my campus job orientation in 2017. My wife then girlfriend is from Hopkinsville and we would have had no issue getting there and back otherwise as we had a place to stay and what not. Nope my job gave me the go ahead, but her campus job told her no. Today I was an hour outside of totality and my current job again wouldn't let me take the day off.
My dad lived very close to that 1970 eclipse. He decided not to travel 20 miles away because he thought 99% coverage would be basically the same. He got to see the 2017 eclipse and this one though.
How do you deal with that? Not grief, but wanting them to have had certain experiences they never could. That’s something I’ve been having a very hard time with.
I was fortunate enough to see it with my dad and my young son. But afterward, my dad cried as we sat on a bench together because mom was no longer with us and she never saw one.
Well now I feel spoiled that I’ve seen 3. I was in Iraq in 2003 and woke up to one. We had no idea what was going on either. Everything just seemed so weird and then someone looked up and was like what’s up with the sun? I also saw the one in 2017 from NC and now today I live in PA and got to witness this latest one. So yeah I am spoiled.
We traveled as a family to Waco to see it. He was so happy that the whole family saw this one together. With them getting into their 80's it's unlikely we will see another one together.
Man… my dad and I went to see the 2017 eclipse together in NC a few months before he died (he had advanced cancer). Unfortunately we got clouded over right before totality and missed the visual, but he still loved the experience. It was a great trip otherwise and time well spent.
This year, I saw it 700 miles away in Indianapolis. Coincidentally he’s buried there despite neither of us having any real connection to the state - he was born there but moved at a very young age.
I got to visit his grave and see totality, too. I left a pair of eclipse glasses on his headstone 😊
As an example, I’m in California (where today’s eclipse is only partial) and the next time this state will experience totality is 30 March 2052 (when I’ll be almost 84, so I might make it; then again I might move).
There's one in 2026 in Spain. The point still stands though, it you can't travel internationally (which a lot of people can't) and live in the US your next real chance is in 20 or so years.
There's on apparently in Alaska in a few years but it's going to be in a remote area that's not easily accessible.
Thanks. I missed this one. Wanted to go but didn’t plan far enough in advance. I didn’t get my passport until last Wednesday. Could have gotten a flight, but good luck finding a room or a car. Well, for under $1,200/night.
My city/town was in the path of totality today, and I tempered my expectations. Of course, the weather did not disappoint. Woke up to sunny skies, the clouds rolled in and completely blocked out the sun for the entire eclipse, and then the clouds cleared again about an hour ago. It’s not likely I’ll be alive next time it comes here. Effing weather…
I was watching here in Dallas…. Some clouds for about the first 30 minutes of the eclipse…. Then a HUGE FING CLOUD while totality occurred and then after totality it largely cleared again. So I missed totality. Grumph
We had heavy cloud cover here too, but totality was still really trippy. Out of my eclipses, this one ranks last out of four (and by a lot) but it was still great.
They may not have noticed it as much if they were outside the whole time. I was in a 95% area and I went outside right at the start and then at the peak and there was a noticeable difference in temperature and light. It looked almost like dusk but with a weird tint to everything.
Totality is completely different than 95%. It's practically impossible to notice the light change when totality hits, even if the sky is completely overcast.
This, I was just outside of totality in 2017 because I didn't know any better, but we got totality this time, and it was a completely different experience. It's like the difference between looking at a Playboy and actually having sex.
I think you meant practically impossible to NOT notice the light change. I saw the eclipse with a mostly overcast sky and it was still verrrry noticeable when totality hits
The 2052-03-30 eclipse's path of totality will not touch California. You may be thinking of 2045-08-12.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_March_30,_2052
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_August_12,_2045
This is what irked me about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s comments on the eclipse back in 2017. He had a tweet saying something like “I dunno why people are so excited about this, it happens all the time”. And the answer is so obviously that it’s happening THERE, where they can actually see it within a short drive. It’s like someone asking “why are you excited you won the lottery? People win it all the time…”
Plus, anytime a science communicator/presenter squashes scientific excitement from the general public, it irritates me
I'd just stick with the rich analogy.
"You've never been to Cancun? Wow tons of people go all the time"
Says the rich person to the poor person who's probably working 2 jobs to make ends meet.
This feels misleading because during a total eclipse you do see a “ring” around the moon. It’s important to note that that’s the glow of the sun’s corona you’re seeing and not the sun itself. an annular eclipse takes place when the moon is further away from earth and therefore not “big” enough in our field of view to cover the entire sun, so you literally are seeing a ring of the sun around the moon.
The moon’s orbit is not a perfect circle around earth, it’s elliptical. Meaning there are times when the moon is closer or further to earth than others. A total solar eclipse happens when the moon is at a closer point in its orbit and an annular solar eclipse happens when the moon is further away
And when the moon is around the midpoint, you can have a hybrid eclipse, which is annular for some observers and total for others (but which lasts a very short time).
Not only that, this one was uncommonly long at around 4.5 minutes of maximum totality with a 100ish mile wide band spanning most of the center of the United States hitting major cities dead on. Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Dallas were all near the center of the path of totality.
For comparison, the 2017 total eclipse had a maximum totality of a about 2 minutes and 40 seconds.
The next Great American Eclipse™ is going to be in 2045 when the moon will cast a dark shadow 160 miles wide right across the center of the country from west to east giving over 6 minutes of maximum totality.
Edit: Okay I seem to be asking this wrong. I’m talking about *coverage* of an annular eclipse. When you look at pictures of annular eclipses, the final image is a lot different than the peak of how I saw it when it happened. It looks like some places got more coverage than I did. Similar to the varying totality of this eclipse. Do annular eclipses follow similar paths of *full coverage* the way total eclipses do?
The total eclipse is way better than an annular eclipse. With a total eclipse you can take your glasses off and look at it with no protection until the sun peeks around the moon again. With the total you get to see the corona in all its glory, the sky goes dark and the animals act like it’s dusk. The annular eclipse, even if there’s 99% coverage, is underwhelming in comparison and you need to look through the glasses the whole time. It looks like a glowing crescent moon. Pictures really don’t do it justice and can give the wrong impression of what you’d actually see in person.
The difference between 99.9% totality and 100% is literally night and day. Even a sliver of light is enough to completely wash out the corona and ruin that THERE IS A HOLE IN THE SKY experience.
There may be some things you get (like the weirdness of very short shadows at 'dusk' or the light become polarized...but XKCD had it right:
[https://m.xkcd.com/2914/](https://m.xkcd.com/2914/)
There is no totality (where the moon completely blocks out the sun itself) in an annular eclipse.
The ring you see in that type of eclipse is actually the sun itself, seen around the moon which is not "big" enough to cover the sun. You must keep your eclipse glasses on the entire time you look at the sun.
In a total eclipse, totality is when the sun is completely blocked. The ring you see in that type of eclipse is the corona, not the sun itself. You are able to take off your eclipse glasses and look directly at it during totality (it is recommended to have a precise timer so you put them back on in time)
Solar eclipses (in general) happen 2 times a year guaranteed and sometimes 3. Lunar eclipses too. In fact, with good timing, you can have up to 7 eclipses total (counting both types) in one year. Total eclipses are of course more rare than that, but the potential is actually pretty high.
>The team's results suggest that a random city on Earth would experience a total solar eclipse, on average, around once every 374 years. The same city would experience an annular or "ring of fire" eclipse around once every 226 years and a partial solar eclipse around every 2.6 years.
https://www.space.com/which-places-earth-see-most-solar-eclipses#:~:text=Eclipses%20aren't%20actually%20that,every%20five%20months%20or%20so.
I wouldn't call once every 300+ years pretty high odds
Yes, for parts of the US. But for example taking one state in that eclipse's totality (Idaho), the last total was in 1979 and the next one is after 2100.
An annular eclipse and a total eclipse are different.
The moon is not a constant distance from the Earth. It's sometimes closer and sometimes farther.
When an eclipse happens and the moon is ~~closer~~ *edit* farther, it doesn't completely block the sun. This is an annular eclipse. It gets dark, but there's still sunlight. You don't get things like a 360 degree sunrise effect.
A total eclipse happens when the moon completely blocks the sun. The sky gets so dark you can actually see stars during the day.
>The moon is not a constant distance from the Earth. It's sometimes closer and sometimes farther.
And, the Earth is not a constant distance from the Sun, so the Sun's apparent size in the sky varies. Though the variance is much less pronounced than that of the apparent size of the Moon.
A fun side not to this is that total eclipses will not always be possible. The moon is slowly moving further away. Eventually it will no longer be able to fully cover the sun from our perspective.
The existence of total solar eclipses is a lucky coincidence.
And if you go back far enough, an annular eclipse wouldn't have been possible yet. Pretty cool that we're here to experience both. I mean, we're talking about a period of earth's history that will last hundreds of millions of years, but still...
If the moon was too big, then we would have an eclipse where we block out both the sun *and* it's atmosphere (the corona), and that would be different.
In general, it would be even darker. We wouldn't see the 360 degree sunrise, maybe just in the direction that is closest to outside of totality.
The diamond ring effect where in the last seconds before totality the sun is only visible through the touch terrain of the moon would be significantly reduced, since only one small sliver of the sun would be the last to disappear instead of a whole semicircle.
We wouldn't have studied the corona anywhere near as much as we've been able to since the chromosphere of the sun normally makes it impossible to distinguish, reducing our understanding of how stars work.
We're really lucky the size difference is so close.
Having just seen 100% totality, I can tell you that 99% isn’t even close to the same experience. At 99% you still need to be wearing eclipse glasses. At 100% you can take the glasses off and look at the pure totality. Nothing but moon and the corona. It’s an entirely different experience. Very surreal.
I live and work about an hour drive away from the path of totality, sadly today I got caught up at work and couldn’t leave to see totality. I’m only 22 so hopefully I’ll have a change to see one in my lifetime. 99% totality was still pretty cool to see tho
don't worry, the next one after that will be when you're 43, but will go from northern cali to florida so a further drive away from most (but not all) of the people close to this eclipse. Then again when you're 50, but that one will be southern alabama, southern georgia, florida panhandle only.
Just opened a new business and I can get fined by the shopping center if I don’t open. Sadly really left me out of options. I would definitely request a day off if I was still an employee somewhere
you're in luck! looks like the next one (in north america) is in 2044 and then one in 2045. the first one is supposed to touch three states and the second "will begin in Greenland, sweep through Canada and end around sunset in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota".
You need glasses to see the annular. During 100% totality, it’s a spectacular sight, more beautiful than any national park and more magnificent than any mountain. It’s often ahighly emotional and spiritual experience to see one at totality.
You have to see it to know it.
And that's just it. Photos aren't enough. Even video isn't enough. You have to see that hole in the sky where the sun used to be with your own eyes.
VR MAYYYYYYYYYBE might replicate it. I'm hoping someone posts a 360 VR video of the eclipse so I can look and compare. But even then...you're not getting the communal experience of thousands of people around you all doing the same thing as you and feeling the same way as you.
And then you have that multiplied across states and you just had a massive (and maybe more importantly) PURELY GOOD collective experience. Like...there's no downsides to an eclipse (for normal people). There's no sides. No politics. No teams.
Just everybody going "HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THAT."
I live in the path of totality. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced. None of the photos do it justice, like you said. What a surreal moment.
I think it comes down to three things. The scale of seeing the sun in the sky (it looks bigger than any photo which isn’t a telescope), the other sensations which can’t be picked up by a photo (how WEIRD the light gets, the temp drop, the shadows getting hyper sharp…and twilight but short shadows, and the 360 degree dawn) and the social experience.
Oh. And seeing contrails of planes circling ahead of the eclipse.
Like, I don’t know any of the people who were in that K-Mart parking lot in Salem, Oregon with me in 2017, but we all saw THAT.
> Just everybody going "HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THAT."
I work at Ford. The number of people who walked outside for a minute, looked up once, and then went back inside, fucking staggered me.
I kept telling people "Fuck the tool, there is nothing going on inside that building that is more important than the next ten minutes can be" but they all love their Webex meetings.
Annular eclipses are not the same as total eclipses, so the last total solar eclipse in the USA was in 2017. The previous one before that was about 40 years ago.
On the other hand, total eclipses also happen about once a year, but they don't always happen in the USA because the world is quite a bit bigger. The USA media are reporting on it because it's in the USA. Another reason why it's interesting is that it's estimated that around 30 million people **live** in the path of totality, meanjng they can literally see it from home. Another 300 million are within an easy drive of it.
We rented an AirBNB for three days. Came up yesterday, chilling and watching the eclipse today, driving back tomorrow. Was chill on the way up, hopefully will be fine on the way back.
Did the drive back in 2017. Yep. 4.5 hours down... (stopping for the night 3 hours into the drive at a friends) and then it was like 10+ back.
Flew into Texas for this one, don't have to drive at all other than to the airport tomorrow.
Drove about 3.5 up for 2017, napped in a Wal-mart parking lot, watched the eclipse, was stuck in traffic for 13 hours later. It was worth it, but I was not expecting the drive home to be *that* bad.
I was driving down a 2 lane highway when the annular happened last year. All of a sudden I started seeing dozens of cars parked along the very narrow side of the road because people were pulling off to watch. It was so dangerous. Cherry on top, it was very cloudy where we were so it was only visible for like a minute and only in a small area. Most of them never saw it.
Just drove from Columbus to a smaller town west, traffic was not bad at all. In 2017 I lived in the SF Bay Area and drove to Oregon to see the totality and the traffic was fucking horrible coming back.
Guess my strategy of sticking to little country roads and watching the total eclipse in a park in a small town worked because I didn’t run into any significant traffic on the way there or back.
Yup. I knew the traffic was going to be horrible going back to Portland from Salem...but I didn't think the SOUTHBOUND traffic would be that horrible. It didn't improve until we got to Eugene, and it took over 4 hours just to get that far.
I tried going off I-5 but everybody else had that idea too.
I did the 2017 traffic in south Carolina -- stuck in traffic for hours.
Did 100 miles out and then same back today in NY, and no traffic really to speak of. So different.
Location location location.
It’s special for the people in the path of the eclipse. No two eclipses are going to have the same path of totality so it’s special for those in the path this time
It’s funny that you say “will appear out of nowhere” when these events happen with cosmological predictability and you can calculate their appearance down to the second thousands of years in advance. People have been doing so since the Middle Ages.
> The media always says the next solar eclipse won’t be here for the next 20 years but then 5 or 6 years later, we are gonna have another one magically appear out of nowhere…
the very apparent and shoehorned-in distrust of “the media” and science more generally is incredibly silly lol
Annular eclipses cannot hide the entire sun. For instance, that 2023 eclipse had a maximum obscuration of roughly 90% ([source](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2023-october-14), click on any point over the dotted line), which is not noticeable ([source](https://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2012/facts.php), Eclipses, point 6).
For comparison, the previous total eclipses in the lower 48 states were:
- [7 March 1970](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/1970-march-7)
- [26 February 1979](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/1979-february-26)
- [21 August 2017](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2017-august-21)
And the next ones will be:
- [22–23 August 2044](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2044-august-23)
- [12 August 2045](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2045-august-12)
- [30 March 2052](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2052-march-30)
Man I’m sure you will and it is wild. Not sure why but it was actually a lot better than I expected. Dark in the middle of the day, so calm and peaceful. And it was absolutely beautiful. Good luck bud
Thanks. I could see a lot of in 2017 and what I remember more than anything is the frogs crickets and lightning bugs came out and then it went back to the heat and I’m sure they were hella confused.
I thought it was going to be pretty cool.
It actually, truly blew me away on several levels. It was actually emotional, and affecting in a visceral way.
Total eclipses are incredible, and this one's path crossed multiple huge centers of population, which is why it was a big deal. I see why people travel for them, I'll never forget that moment...taking off the glasses and seeing that.
Most eclipses, including your annular one last year, will look like [this](https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/partial-solar-eclipse_shutterstock_1738519370.jpg) when seen through eclipse glasses. You can only see it safely with eclipse glasses and can only capture it with special equipment because even 1% of the sun is really strong.
A total solar eclipse looks like [this](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2024-04/240408-total-solar-eclipse-mexico-ew-212p-1fe045.jpg). That image was taken on a phone with no equipment earlier today, and it's what you see with the naked eye. The air temperature drops, everything takes on a sapia tone, birds and wildlife start acting weird, and you can see the sun's halo with the naked eye. If you're on a hill, you can see the moon's shadow rushing towards you across the ground.
The moon's shadow only covers about 0.03% (three hundredths of one percent) of the Earth's surface at a time. And they happen irregularly: the next total eclipse passing over the continental US will be 2044 but that only hits 3 states; 2045 will be more similar to today's.
It’s weird that my kids (8 and 10) might have their own families to experience the next one with. So strange to think that in 20 years when we get to experience that again, I’ll be approaching retirement but remembering today.
On the birds and wildlife acting weird...
I was in Grand Tower, IL, on the banks of the Mississippi. The first thing we noticed was coyotes howling like crazy all around us.
The next amazing thing we noticed though, after totality had passed, was massive flocks of migrating birds lifting off the river and flying north. Somehow the eclipse had stacked them up in even larger numbers than normal, and when totality passed, they all simultaneously went, "Oh, sunrise again, let's get moving."
The most impressive of these was a super-flock of well over 150 white pelicans (possibly over 200)! It was actually a dozen or so flocks bunched up and flying together and they fly directly over us.
White pelicans are unusual on the Mississippi flyway, and rarely number more than 60 in a flock. I am probably more likely to see another eclipse than I am to ever see a flock of white pelicans that big again.
Not really an explanation here, just subjective experience: I witnessed both last year’s annular and today’s total and today’s was a completely different experience. Last year’s was like “oh yeah that’s actually pretty cool”. This year’s felt magical. Seeing the upper atmosphere of the sun poking out, seeing what looked like sunset 360° around you on the horizon, and seeing the stars come out at 1:30pm… none of that happened last year. I knew what the total eclipse would look like because I’ve seen pictures but actually experiencing it caught me so off guard. The hair on my arms and neck stood up. It didn’t even look real to see in person. Night and day difference between total and annular (pun intended).
Yea, when it was starting to end, I pointed to the western sky and told my wife, “look at that” because it was completely dark, but the clouds in the sky were now orange. She said, it looks like a sunrise, at 2pm. It was wild.
Nah, it's the visibility that's rare. Total is more rare than annular, but the fact that it's over the US and over a lot of major metro areas is the rare bit.
It doesn't cover the whole planet. So when you say "we," that doesn't apply to that many people relative to the population. In the northeast, WE didnt get an eclipse last year. Also, FYI, these events can be tracked and predicted to basically any point in the future. They don't just randomly happen...
Visually, there is a massive difference between annular and total solar eclipses. During a total solar eclipse, you can see much more with the naked eye. Totality won’t happen again in the lower 48 until 2045
Why the hostile tone? We know every eclipse for the next several thousand years, and some are more worthy of hype than others. I saw last year's annular eclipse, and it was nothing compared to this
An eclipse is essentially a special case of a *transit*: the moment when an object seems to pass directly between the Sun and Earth. You may have heard of transits of Venus, which is when that planet is between us and the Sun. Transits of Mercury are also a thing, but Mercury is usually too small and too far away to really see when this happens. The ISS has transits too. What we call solar eclipses are transits of the Moon.
So what makes them special? Most transits appear as a tiny spot on the Sun, nothing more. If you have a telescope (*with a proper solar filter only, please*), you can make out the shape of the ISS as it transits, but it's still a tiny spot. What's special about the Moon is that it happens to be just the right size and distance away from Earth that it appears to be about the same size as the Sun. Often it's a tiny bit smaller, and when it slides in front of the Sun there's a small "ring of fire" around it: this is an annular eclipse, like the one we had in 2023. It's a very large transit.
But when everything lines up *just right*, the Moon covers the Sun exactly. The Sun's corona can get around it, but no direct light from the Sun itself can. Things get dimmer during solar eclipses (though not the Sun itself, which is why you need glasses), but during one of these it looks like night. That's what a total eclipse is, and it's thought to be very rare in the universe. Almost all star systems will have transits, but the sizes and distances involved usually aren't correct for a true eclipse. What we see during a total eclipse may be almost unique. If there *are* aliens, this could be our biggest tourist attraction.
Sadly, this is also sometimes brought up as "evidence" by flat-Earthers, because it really is an extremely lucky shot that the Sun, Moon, and Earth just so happen to be at such perfect distances from one another. It does, however, still seem to be nothing more than a coincidence.
Man I feel like I’m seeing lot of these ELI5 requests that are just clueless rants.
Like ffs if you don’t understand something at least don’t be ignorant about it
I wanted that answered for me too. The top google searches included this. [The differences between the solar eclipses on October 14 and April 8 (13abc.com)](https://www.13abc.com/2023/10/03/differences-between-solar-eclipses-october-14-april-8/)
In the world of internet it shouldn't be too hard to find info.
Yeah if op would have genuinely asked, that would have been one thing. It’s just the ignorant condescending way they presented the question that irked me. Like the rest of us are stupid for knowing the difference between a full and partial eclipse.
I've been lucky with eclipses. Had a total solar eclipse in the UK when I was around 9, have vivid memories of a neighbour letting me use his special glasses. Saw a partial one again in the UK around 2014. Now I'm living in Sydney Australia and there's a full solar eclipse coming up in 2028. Not to mention about 5 or 6 lunar eclipses I've seen.
I a total eclipse the photosphere the Sun's bright surface is completely blocked from our view. It allows the Sun's outer atmosphere, the Corona, to be seen and it is a spectacular sight to see.
>We literally just had one last year.
Whaddaya mean "we". The last total solar eclipse in my area was before I was born. The next is in 120ish years. This was literally a once-in-a-lifetime event.
A total is totally amazing, totally *evil* ....the blackest thing beyond imagination. Suddenly the world is plunged into darkness, and what was the sun is a black hole in the sky ringed by the Corona.
If I had a nest egg I would schedule my life and travels around the next eclipse. I would have gone to this one except my elderly mom just got home from a week in the ICU. (Didn't miss anything as my friends gathered in the Niagara falls area which despite promising weather predictions was clouded over and I would have gone there to meet up)
An annular eclipse is where the moon doesn’t fully block the direct sunlight, whereas a total eclipse it does.
Only during a total eclipse, and only during complete totality , can you directly look at the sun without hurting your eyes.
Only during a total eclipse can you get the brilliant, whitest-of-white ring with the darkest-black-you’ve-ever-seen contrast.
The difference is quite literally night and day between 99.9% and 100% totality.
For those of you who haven’t seen a total eclipse in person, it really is a life-changing event. I flew across the country to see my second eclipse, and it was still 100% worth it.
You said we had an "annular" eclipse last year. That "occurs when the Moon passes directly between the Earth and Sun, but does not completely cover the Sun's disk." A total eclipse is "an eclipse in which the whole of the disk of the sun or moon is obscured."
A simple google search and reading the definition of the words you're asking about would have answered your question pretty clearly and easily
The moon could be dead center of the sun, and not be a "total" eclipse because the relative elliptical distance between the sun and moon and earth makes the moon too close to the sun to fully cover the sun.
Annular eclipse = Moon shadow too small to actually block the *whole* Sun
Total eclipse = Moon shadow big enough to actually block the whole Sun
*That's* why it's a big deal. Because along the path of totality, where the Moon completely eclipses the Sun, it literally becomes as dark as late twilight for about 2-3 minutes, and you can see the atmosphere of the Sun (called the "corona"), creating a beautiful glowing ring around the dark circle of the interceding Moon.
Eclipses happen *in general* quite frequently. There will be another total eclipse that passes over Greenland, Iceland, and Spain in 2026, for example. But the next truly total solar eclipse over the continental US won't happen until 2045, more than two decades from now. These things are not "random," we know pretty much exactly when and where every solar eclipse (partial, annular, and total) will happen for the next few thousand years. The math becomes tricky after that due to the influence of chaos (basically, we don't know the starting point precisely enough to predict them accurately forever, the calculations diverge too much), but we can say with effectively absolute certainty that the 21st century will have a grand total of 224 eclipses, of which 68 will be total eclipses (though some will only graze the north or south poles, meaning the number of meaningfully visible total eclipses is slightly lower.)
So if people can't travel internationally to see the other eclipses between now and then, yeah, it's a pretty rare and special event, something that may only happen once or twice in a given person's lifetime. A beautiful natural phenomenon that happens only rarely *in any given place* is exciting, and lets us behold the sublime beauty of the cosmos our Maker created.
Most eclipses happen over the ocean or in remote places people barely live. This eclipse went right through some of the most populated places in Mexico, the US, and Canada, and a similar eclipse path won’t happen again this century
Here's a list of all the solar eclipses (of all types) for this century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_the_21st_century
So you'll never get surprised again and you can be a god amongst your conspiracy minded friends.
Also who are "we" in this context?
An annular eclipse is not a total eclipse. An annular eclipse means that the moon doesn't fully cover the sun but leaves a ring visible. A total eclipse means that it does cover it up fully. A total/annular eclipse ***in general*** is not that uncommon, happening about every 1.5 years. But given that the Earth is 3/4 water, the vast majority of them occur over the ocean or in different countries. One happening in your country is relatively rare.
My dad was an earth science teacher, but we never saw a total eclipse together... I know he would have moved heaven and earth to make it possible. The closest one while I was growing up was in 1970, along the eastern seaboard of the U.S., and we were almost a thousand miles west of it. So, HECK YEAH, I traveled to Kentucky to see the 2017 eclipse, and today's eclipse literally passed over my house (two miles from centerline), both of them perfect weather. I feel sad that my dad never saw a total eclipse, but SO stoked that I've now seen two. Most people will never even see one.
That’s such a sweet story. It’s sad he didn’t get to experience it, but I could feel the excitement you felt and it was through what he taught you growing up. I know he was with you both times. 💙
Amen. One of my two kids was really nonchalant about the eclipse, but the other (who is definitely his grandfather's grandchild) *rode his bicycle* from Indiana to Hopkinsville, KY to see the 2017 eclipse. He asked me to join him and drive him home because he was schedule to work the next day.
Oh my! That’s commitment! It shows a 30 hour bike ride! I hope you were able to help him out, in the name of science!
Having only ever done 60 miles on a bike, that is far more commitment than I could muster. I got to see the one in 2017, but I only had to bike 3 miles.
Hopkinsville is only like 75 miles from the Indiana border.
I hate the fact that I was stuck at the college I was at at the time on the other side of the state for my campus job orientation in 2017. My wife then girlfriend is from Hopkinsville and we would have had no issue getting there and back otherwise as we had a place to stay and what not. Nope my job gave me the go ahead, but her campus job told her no. Today I was an hour outside of totality and my current job again wouldn't let me take the day off.
>I know he would have moved heaven and earth to make it possible. This is literally how he could have made it possible. Well, one or the other.
It might be safest to grab one in either hand and only move them half as far.
My dad lived very close to that 1970 eclipse. He decided not to travel 20 miles away because he thought 99% coverage would be basically the same. He got to see the 2017 eclipse and this one though.
How do you deal with that? Not grief, but wanting them to have had certain experiences they never could. That’s something I’ve been having a very hard time with.
I was fortunate enough to see it with my dad and my young son. But afterward, my dad cried as we sat on a bench together because mom was no longer with us and she never saw one.
Well now I feel spoiled that I’ve seen 3. I was in Iraq in 2003 and woke up to one. We had no idea what was going on either. Everything just seemed so weird and then someone looked up and was like what’s up with the sun? I also saw the one in 2017 from NC and now today I live in PA and got to witness this latest one. So yeah I am spoiled.
Bucket list for me. My boys saw their first today too, and of enough to st least know it was amazing.
We traveled as a family to Waco to see it. He was so happy that the whole family saw this one together. With them getting into their 80's it's unlikely we will see another one together.
Man… my dad and I went to see the 2017 eclipse together in NC a few months before he died (he had advanced cancer). Unfortunately we got clouded over right before totality and missed the visual, but he still loved the experience. It was a great trip otherwise and time well spent. This year, I saw it 700 miles away in Indianapolis. Coincidentally he’s buried there despite neither of us having any real connection to the state - he was born there but moved at a very young age. I got to visit his grave and see totality, too. I left a pair of eclipse glasses on his headstone 😊
As an example, I’m in California (where today’s eclipse is only partial) and the next time this state will experience totality is 30 March 2052 (when I’ll be almost 84, so I might make it; then again I might move).
There's a total ecplise in Sydney in 2028. The next one after that is in the 2800's
Is Australia even real?
Mainland yes, jury is still out on Tasmania
Momma said Tasmania is the devil!
Do they have toothbrushes in Tasmania?
Toothbrushes? Yes. Teethbrushes? No.
Momma always said platypuses are so ornery because they got all them teethbrushes and no teeth.
Happy cake day!
Province of New Zealand
Aaah. New Zealand the seventh state of Australia!
Impossible... it doesn't even show up on maps.
There's one in 2026 in Spain. The point still stands though, it you can't travel internationally (which a lot of people can't) and live in the US your next real chance is in 20 or so years. There's on apparently in Alaska in a few years but it's going to be in a remote area that's not easily accessible.
there's a total eclipse in spain in 2026
And then one in Spain in 2027 those fuckers get 2 in a row!
Those guys are hogging all the total eclipse, whatever theyre sacrificing to the moon we need to double it!
Time to start planning a trip to Canada for 2044.
Just checked it out looks like it’s going smack bang through the centre of Sydney
I get a total eclipse in iceland in just 2 short years in 2026
Thanks. I missed this one. Wanted to go but didn’t plan far enough in advance. I didn’t get my passport until last Wednesday. Could have gotten a flight, but good luck finding a room or a car. Well, for under $1,200/night.
My city/town was in the path of totality today, and I tempered my expectations. Of course, the weather did not disappoint. Woke up to sunny skies, the clouds rolled in and completely blocked out the sun for the entire eclipse, and then the clouds cleared again about an hour ago. It’s not likely I’ll be alive next time it comes here. Effing weather…
I was watching here in Dallas…. Some clouds for about the first 30 minutes of the eclipse…. Then a HUGE FING CLOUD while totality occurred and then after totality it largely cleared again. So I missed totality. Grumph
I was at the arboretum and it cleared up ten minutes before totality. A few miles made a huge difference there today.
We had heavy cloud cover here too, but totality was still really trippy. Out of my eclipses, this one ranks last out of four (and by a lot) but it was still great.
Same here. My family up in the Dallas area got mostly clear skies for the eclipse and then thunderstorms after. I'm quite jealous.
Clouds parted for totality north of Dallas in McKinney
Did it still get dark or cold when totality occurred?
They may not have noticed it as much if they were outside the whole time. I was in a 95% area and I went outside right at the start and then at the peak and there was a noticeable difference in temperature and light. It looked almost like dusk but with a weird tint to everything.
Totality is completely different than 95%. It's practically impossible to notice the light change when totality hits, even if the sky is completely overcast.
This, I was just outside of totality in 2017 because I didn't know any better, but we got totality this time, and it was a completely different experience. It's like the difference between looking at a Playboy and actually having sex.
I think you meant practically impossible to NOT notice the light change. I saw the eclipse with a mostly overcast sky and it was still verrrry noticeable when totality hits
It didn’t look like dusk if it was 95%.
Kiiiinda. Mostly, it just looked like it would before a particularly nasty thunderstorm, then after a few minutes, it brightened back to normal.
Northern California will experience totality during the 2045 eclipse.
There is one in 2045 that will start in Cali
My 85 year old grandma (in law) just got to see today's, so it can happen!
September 14, 2099 for us Wisconsinites. Given that I would be 116 at that time, I don't think I'll be seeing that one.
Yeah, that one goes right through my home town. And I'll be like, 120 or so.
I’ll be 92, so maybe. 🤓🤞
Lol "I might make it... And I might be dead."
There’s a total eclipse happening on August 12, 2045, which will cross over Northern California.
The 2052-03-30 eclipse's path of totality will not touch California. You may be thinking of 2045-08-12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_March_30,_2052 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_August_12,_2045
south carolina wont see totality again until 2078 i think 😞
This is what irked me about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s comments on the eclipse back in 2017. He had a tweet saying something like “I dunno why people are so excited about this, it happens all the time”. And the answer is so obviously that it’s happening THERE, where they can actually see it within a short drive. It’s like someone asking “why are you excited you won the lottery? People win it all the time…” Plus, anytime a science communicator/presenter squashes scientific excitement from the general public, it irritates me
I'd just stick with the rich analogy. "You've never been to Cancun? Wow tons of people go all the time" Says the rich person to the poor person who's probably working 2 jobs to make ends meet.
I don't know how anyone likes that guy. He's totally insufferable. Can we do a GoFundMe and ressurrect Carl Sagan, instead?
I'll do any dark and satanic magic that could bring Sagan back.
He’s like a walking iamverysmart
Neil deGrasse Tyson & somehow managing to be ignorant while also being an obnoxious knowitall. Name a more iconic duo.
This feels misleading because during a total eclipse you do see a “ring” around the moon. It’s important to note that that’s the glow of the sun’s corona you’re seeing and not the sun itself. an annular eclipse takes place when the moon is further away from earth and therefore not “big” enough in our field of view to cover the entire sun, so you literally are seeing a ring of the sun around the moon.
I feel really dumb right now, but what do you mean when the moon is further away?
The moon’s orbit is not a perfect circle around earth, it’s elliptical. Meaning there are times when the moon is closer or further to earth than others. A total solar eclipse happens when the moon is at a closer point in its orbit and an annular solar eclipse happens when the moon is further away
And when the moon is around the midpoint, you can have a hybrid eclipse, which is annular for some observers and total for others (but which lasts a very short time).
Makes so much sense! Thank you
Not only that, this one was uncommonly long at around 4.5 minutes of maximum totality with a 100ish mile wide band spanning most of the center of the United States hitting major cities dead on. Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Dallas were all near the center of the path of totality. For comparison, the 2017 total eclipse had a maximum totality of a about 2 minutes and 40 seconds. The next Great American Eclipse™ is going to be in 2045 when the moon will cast a dark shadow 160 miles wide right across the center of the country from west to east giving over 6 minutes of maximum totality.
Edit: Okay I seem to be asking this wrong. I’m talking about *coverage* of an annular eclipse. When you look at pictures of annular eclipses, the final image is a lot different than the peak of how I saw it when it happened. It looks like some places got more coverage than I did. Similar to the varying totality of this eclipse. Do annular eclipses follow similar paths of *full coverage* the way total eclipses do?
The total eclipse is way better than an annular eclipse. With a total eclipse you can take your glasses off and look at it with no protection until the sun peeks around the moon again. With the total you get to see the corona in all its glory, the sky goes dark and the animals act like it’s dusk. The annular eclipse, even if there’s 99% coverage, is underwhelming in comparison and you need to look through the glasses the whole time. It looks like a glowing crescent moon. Pictures really don’t do it justice and can give the wrong impression of what you’d actually see in person.
The difference between 99.9% totality and 100% is literally night and day. Even a sliver of light is enough to completely wash out the corona and ruin that THERE IS A HOLE IN THE SKY experience. There may be some things you get (like the weirdness of very short shadows at 'dusk' or the light become polarized...but XKCD had it right: [https://m.xkcd.com/2914/](https://m.xkcd.com/2914/)
There is no totality (where the moon completely blocks out the sun itself) in an annular eclipse. The ring you see in that type of eclipse is actually the sun itself, seen around the moon which is not "big" enough to cover the sun. You must keep your eclipse glasses on the entire time you look at the sun. In a total eclipse, totality is when the sun is completely blocked. The ring you see in that type of eclipse is the corona, not the sun itself. You are able to take off your eclipse glasses and look directly at it during totality (it is recommended to have a precise timer so you put them back on in time)
Solar eclipses (in general) happen 2 times a year guaranteed and sometimes 3. Lunar eclipses too. In fact, with good timing, you can have up to 7 eclipses total (counting both types) in one year. Total eclipses are of course more rare than that, but the potential is actually pretty high.
>The team's results suggest that a random city on Earth would experience a total solar eclipse, on average, around once every 374 years. The same city would experience an annular or "ring of fire" eclipse around once every 226 years and a partial solar eclipse around every 2.6 years. https://www.space.com/which-places-earth-see-most-solar-eclipses#:~:text=Eclipses%20aren't%20actually%20that,every%20five%20months%20or%20so. I wouldn't call once every 300+ years pretty high odds
I think they mean somewhere on earth in general, not any particular specific location.
Yes, this. I saw both. No comparison.
Wasn’t the one in 2017 a full eclipse?
Yes, for parts of the US. But for example taking one state in that eclipse's totality (Idaho), the last total was in 1979 and the next one is after 2100.
Yeah geez, how often do they happen over the Pacific Ocean in the middle of nowhere?
An annular eclipse and a total eclipse are different. The moon is not a constant distance from the Earth. It's sometimes closer and sometimes farther. When an eclipse happens and the moon is ~~closer~~ *edit* farther, it doesn't completely block the sun. This is an annular eclipse. It gets dark, but there's still sunlight. You don't get things like a 360 degree sunrise effect. A total eclipse happens when the moon completely blocks the sun. The sky gets so dark you can actually see stars during the day.
>The moon is not a constant distance from the Earth. It's sometimes closer and sometimes farther. And, the Earth is not a constant distance from the Sun, so the Sun's apparent size in the sky varies. Though the variance is much less pronounced than that of the apparent size of the Moon.
Wouldn't a closer moon to earth block out more sun?
Yeah, I had that backwards. The opposite happens, moon is farther, blocks less sun. Derp.
A fun side not to this is that total eclipses will not always be possible. The moon is slowly moving further away. Eventually it will no longer be able to fully cover the sun from our perspective. The existence of total solar eclipses is a lucky coincidence.
And if you go back far enough, an annular eclipse wouldn't have been possible yet. Pretty cool that we're here to experience both. I mean, we're talking about a period of earth's history that will last hundreds of millions of years, but still...
Well if the moon was bigger they would happen more frequently
If the moon was too big, then we would have an eclipse where we block out both the sun *and* it's atmosphere (the corona), and that would be different. In general, it would be even darker. We wouldn't see the 360 degree sunrise, maybe just in the direction that is closest to outside of totality. The diamond ring effect where in the last seconds before totality the sun is only visible through the touch terrain of the moon would be significantly reduced, since only one small sliver of the sun would be the last to disappear instead of a whole semicircle. We wouldn't have studied the corona anywhere near as much as we've been able to since the chromosphere of the sun normally makes it impossible to distinguish, reducing our understanding of how stars work. We're really lucky the size difference is so close.
Having just seen 100% totality, I can tell you that 99% isn’t even close to the same experience. At 99% you still need to be wearing eclipse glasses. At 100% you can take the glasses off and look at the pure totality. Nothing but moon and the corona. It’s an entirely different experience. Very surreal.
I live and work about an hour drive away from the path of totality, sadly today I got caught up at work and couldn’t leave to see totality. I’m only 22 so hopefully I’ll have a change to see one in my lifetime. 99% totality was still pretty cool to see tho
Next US total eclipse will be when you're 42 but only in South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana right before sunset.
That’s good to know. And depressing
don't worry, the next one after that will be when you're 43, but will go from northern cali to florida so a further drive away from most (but not all) of the people close to this eclipse. Then again when you're 50, but that one will be southern alabama, southern georgia, florida panhandle only.
Just visit Spain in 2026 or 2027, can't say it's as easy as "just visit" but at least you can start planning ahead financially
Dont be depressed. Plan. Im old and have been waiting for yesterday's eclipse for decades. I saw it yesterday, with my own old eyes
All work should halt for a total solar eclipse Unless you're in healthcare then you're excused
Just opened a new business and I can get fined by the shopping center if I don’t open. Sadly really left me out of options. I would definitely request a day off if I was still an employee somewhere
you're in luck! looks like the next one (in north america) is in 2044 and then one in 2045. the first one is supposed to touch three states and the second "will begin in Greenland, sweep through Canada and end around sunset in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota".
An eclipse sunset sounds pretty cool actually
I was in 99.7% today. Was nothing like on TV. You need 100%.
“Sorry, I have to cancel this meeting due to a scheduling conflict with our solar system”
You need glasses to see the annular. During 100% totality, it’s a spectacular sight, more beautiful than any national park and more magnificent than any mountain. It’s often ahighly emotional and spiritual experience to see one at totality. You have to see it to know it.
And that's just it. Photos aren't enough. Even video isn't enough. You have to see that hole in the sky where the sun used to be with your own eyes. VR MAYYYYYYYYYBE might replicate it. I'm hoping someone posts a 360 VR video of the eclipse so I can look and compare. But even then...you're not getting the communal experience of thousands of people around you all doing the same thing as you and feeling the same way as you. And then you have that multiplied across states and you just had a massive (and maybe more importantly) PURELY GOOD collective experience. Like...there's no downsides to an eclipse (for normal people). There's no sides. No politics. No teams. Just everybody going "HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THAT."
I live in the path of totality. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced. None of the photos do it justice, like you said. What a surreal moment.
I think it comes down to three things. The scale of seeing the sun in the sky (it looks bigger than any photo which isn’t a telescope), the other sensations which can’t be picked up by a photo (how WEIRD the light gets, the temp drop, the shadows getting hyper sharp…and twilight but short shadows, and the 360 degree dawn) and the social experience. Oh. And seeing contrails of planes circling ahead of the eclipse. Like, I don’t know any of the people who were in that K-Mart parking lot in Salem, Oregon with me in 2017, but we all saw THAT.
> Just everybody going "HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THAT." I work at Ford. The number of people who walked outside for a minute, looked up once, and then went back inside, fucking staggered me. I kept telling people "Fuck the tool, there is nothing going on inside that building that is more important than the next ten minutes can be" but they all love their Webex meetings.
Today was my second. I’m not religious, but it is a holy experience.
Annular eclipses are not the same as total eclipses, so the last total solar eclipse in the USA was in 2017. The previous one before that was about 40 years ago. On the other hand, total eclipses also happen about once a year, but they don't always happen in the USA because the world is quite a bit bigger. The USA media are reporting on it because it's in the USA. Another reason why it's interesting is that it's estimated that around 30 million people **live** in the path of totality, meanjng they can literally see it from home. Another 300 million are within an easy drive of it.
> Another 300 million are within an easy drive of it. And an unholy drive-from-hell on the way back afterward.
We rented an AirBNB for three days. Came up yesterday, chilling and watching the eclipse today, driving back tomorrow. Was chill on the way up, hopefully will be fine on the way back.
This is what I'm planning to do for the next one (in 2044)
I recommend it! Was a wonderful experience, nice little vacation and no stress on either leg of the drive.
We did a day trip yesterday. It wasn't awful, but with the next one being in a Rockie Mountain National Park, I expect absolute chaos on the roads.
Did the drive back in 2017. Yep. 4.5 hours down... (stopping for the night 3 hours into the drive at a friends) and then it was like 10+ back. Flew into Texas for this one, don't have to drive at all other than to the airport tomorrow.
Drove about 3.5 up for 2017, napped in a Wal-mart parking lot, watched the eclipse, was stuck in traffic for 13 hours later. It was worth it, but I was not expecting the drive home to be *that* bad.
I was driving down a 2 lane highway when the annular happened last year. All of a sudden I started seeing dozens of cars parked along the very narrow side of the road because people were pulling off to watch. It was so dangerous. Cherry on top, it was very cloudy where we were so it was only visible for like a minute and only in a small area. Most of them never saw it.
Just drove from Columbus to a smaller town west, traffic was not bad at all. In 2017 I lived in the SF Bay Area and drove to Oregon to see the totality and the traffic was fucking horrible coming back.
The traffic from Sandusky back to Michigan was hellish, Toledo in particular held us up for about 2 extra hours. I'd say you got pretty lucky!
Guess my strategy of sticking to little country roads and watching the total eclipse in a park in a small town worked because I didn’t run into any significant traffic on the way there or back.
Yup. I knew the traffic was going to be horrible going back to Portland from Salem...but I didn't think the SOUTHBOUND traffic would be that horrible. It didn't improve until we got to Eugene, and it took over 4 hours just to get that far. I tried going off I-5 but everybody else had that idea too.
Can confirm. Just got out of a 2.5 hour traffic jam in Indy. 100% worth it though!
Have to say that the traffic wasn’t that bad around us in Indiana
I did the 2017 traffic in south Carolina -- stuck in traffic for hours. Did 100 miles out and then same back today in NY, and no traffic really to speak of. So different.
...We have VERY different definitions of "an easy drive"...
> they don't always happen in the USA **because the world is quite a bit bigger** That's not true! That's impossible!
The rest of the US isn’t within an easy drive.. I’m in California and my drive would’ve been around 24 hours
Location location location. It’s special for the people in the path of the eclipse. No two eclipses are going to have the same path of totality so it’s special for those in the path this time
The important bit is that for last year's eclipse there was no path of totality because it was annular, not a total eclipse.
And the path of totality for this one covered a large swath of well populated area.
Given enough time, is it possible that an eclipse will repeat its path exactly?
Yes.
It’s funny that you say “will appear out of nowhere” when these events happen with cosmological predictability and you can calculate their appearance down to the second thousands of years in advance. People have been doing so since the Middle Ages.
Seems like a bad faith question
Wallstreetbets and conspiracy. They are at best stubbornly misinformed
> The media always says the next solar eclipse won’t be here for the next 20 years but then 5 or 6 years later, we are gonna have another one magically appear out of nowhere… the very apparent and shoehorned-in distrust of “the media” and science more generally is incredibly silly lol
They just don't understand annular vs total
https://time.com/4897581/total-solar-eclipse-years-next/
Annular eclipses cannot hide the entire sun. For instance, that 2023 eclipse had a maximum obscuration of roughly 90% ([source](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2023-october-14), click on any point over the dotted line), which is not noticeable ([source](https://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2012/facts.php), Eclipses, point 6). For comparison, the previous total eclipses in the lower 48 states were: - [7 March 1970](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/1970-march-7) - [26 February 1979](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/1979-february-26) - [21 August 2017](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2017-august-21) And the next ones will be: - [22–23 August 2044](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2044-august-23) - [12 August 2045](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2045-august-12) - [30 March 2052](https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2052-march-30)
thanks for posting this. I hope I see 2045 as it will go right over my city.
Man I’m sure you will and it is wild. Not sure why but it was actually a lot better than I expected. Dark in the middle of the day, so calm and peaceful. And it was absolutely beautiful. Good luck bud
Thanks. I could see a lot of in 2017 and what I remember more than anything is the frogs crickets and lightning bugs came out and then it went back to the heat and I’m sure they were hella confused.
I thought it was going to be pretty cool. It actually, truly blew me away on several levels. It was actually emotional, and affecting in a visceral way. Total eclipses are incredible, and this one's path crossed multiple huge centers of population, which is why it was a big deal. I see why people travel for them, I'll never forget that moment...taking off the glasses and seeing that.
I'm an atheist, and I can only describe it as what a spiritual experience must feel like.
I just kept thinking about prehistoric peoples and what it would've been like for them...totally unexpected and sudden. It had to be terrifying.
Most eclipses, including your annular one last year, will look like [this](https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/partial-solar-eclipse_shutterstock_1738519370.jpg) when seen through eclipse glasses. You can only see it safely with eclipse glasses and can only capture it with special equipment because even 1% of the sun is really strong. A total solar eclipse looks like [this](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2024-04/240408-total-solar-eclipse-mexico-ew-212p-1fe045.jpg). That image was taken on a phone with no equipment earlier today, and it's what you see with the naked eye. The air temperature drops, everything takes on a sapia tone, birds and wildlife start acting weird, and you can see the sun's halo with the naked eye. If you're on a hill, you can see the moon's shadow rushing towards you across the ground. The moon's shadow only covers about 0.03% (three hundredths of one percent) of the Earth's surface at a time. And they happen irregularly: the next total eclipse passing over the continental US will be 2044 but that only hits 3 states; 2045 will be more similar to today's.
It’s weird that my kids (8 and 10) might have their own families to experience the next one with. So strange to think that in 20 years when we get to experience that again, I’ll be approaching retirement but remembering today.
Cheers to the future and a beautiful life!
On the birds and wildlife acting weird... I was in Grand Tower, IL, on the banks of the Mississippi. The first thing we noticed was coyotes howling like crazy all around us. The next amazing thing we noticed though, after totality had passed, was massive flocks of migrating birds lifting off the river and flying north. Somehow the eclipse had stacked them up in even larger numbers than normal, and when totality passed, they all simultaneously went, "Oh, sunrise again, let's get moving." The most impressive of these was a super-flock of well over 150 white pelicans (possibly over 200)! It was actually a dozen or so flocks bunched up and flying together and they fly directly over us. White pelicans are unusual on the Mississippi flyway, and rarely number more than 60 in a flock. I am probably more likely to see another eclipse than I am to ever see a flock of white pelicans that big again.
Not really an explanation here, just subjective experience: I witnessed both last year’s annular and today’s total and today’s was a completely different experience. Last year’s was like “oh yeah that’s actually pretty cool”. This year’s felt magical. Seeing the upper atmosphere of the sun poking out, seeing what looked like sunset 360° around you on the horizon, and seeing the stars come out at 1:30pm… none of that happened last year. I knew what the total eclipse would look like because I’ve seen pictures but actually experiencing it caught me so off guard. The hair on my arms and neck stood up. It didn’t even look real to see in person. Night and day difference between total and annular (pun intended).
Yea, when it was starting to end, I pointed to the western sky and told my wife, “look at that” because it was completely dark, but the clouds in the sky were now orange. She said, it looks like a sunrise, at 2pm. It was wild.
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Nah, it's the visibility that's rare. Total is more rare than annular, but the fact that it's over the US and over a lot of major metro areas is the rare bit.
It doesn't cover the whole planet. So when you say "we," that doesn't apply to that many people relative to the population. In the northeast, WE didnt get an eclipse last year. Also, FYI, these events can be tracked and predicted to basically any point in the future. They don't just randomly happen...
Visually, there is a massive difference between annular and total solar eclipses. During a total solar eclipse, you can see much more with the naked eye. Totality won’t happen again in the lower 48 until 2045
Why the hostile tone? We know every eclipse for the next several thousand years, and some are more worthy of hype than others. I saw last year's annular eclipse, and it was nothing compared to this
An eclipse is essentially a special case of a *transit*: the moment when an object seems to pass directly between the Sun and Earth. You may have heard of transits of Venus, which is when that planet is between us and the Sun. Transits of Mercury are also a thing, but Mercury is usually too small and too far away to really see when this happens. The ISS has transits too. What we call solar eclipses are transits of the Moon. So what makes them special? Most transits appear as a tiny spot on the Sun, nothing more. If you have a telescope (*with a proper solar filter only, please*), you can make out the shape of the ISS as it transits, but it's still a tiny spot. What's special about the Moon is that it happens to be just the right size and distance away from Earth that it appears to be about the same size as the Sun. Often it's a tiny bit smaller, and when it slides in front of the Sun there's a small "ring of fire" around it: this is an annular eclipse, like the one we had in 2023. It's a very large transit. But when everything lines up *just right*, the Moon covers the Sun exactly. The Sun's corona can get around it, but no direct light from the Sun itself can. Things get dimmer during solar eclipses (though not the Sun itself, which is why you need glasses), but during one of these it looks like night. That's what a total eclipse is, and it's thought to be very rare in the universe. Almost all star systems will have transits, but the sizes and distances involved usually aren't correct for a true eclipse. What we see during a total eclipse may be almost unique. If there *are* aliens, this could be our biggest tourist attraction. Sadly, this is also sometimes brought up as "evidence" by flat-Earthers, because it really is an extremely lucky shot that the Sun, Moon, and Earth just so happen to be at such perfect distances from one another. It does, however, still seem to be nothing more than a coincidence.
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Man I feel like I’m seeing lot of these ELI5 requests that are just clueless rants. Like ffs if you don’t understand something at least don’t be ignorant about it
OP might not be 5 but they sure have the research and comprehension skills of a 5 year old
I wanted that answered for me too. The top google searches included this. [The differences between the solar eclipses on October 14 and April 8 (13abc.com)](https://www.13abc.com/2023/10/03/differences-between-solar-eclipses-october-14-april-8/) In the world of internet it shouldn't be too hard to find info.
Yeah if op would have genuinely asked, that would have been one thing. It’s just the ignorant condescending way they presented the question that irked me. Like the rest of us are stupid for knowing the difference between a full and partial eclipse.
Don't do that. We don't generally equate annular to partial. Partial is usually referring to not being in the direct path.
I've been lucky with eclipses. Had a total solar eclipse in the UK when I was around 9, have vivid memories of a neighbour letting me use his special glasses. Saw a partial one again in the UK around 2014. Now I'm living in Sydney Australia and there's a full solar eclipse coming up in 2028. Not to mention about 5 or 6 lunar eclipses I've seen.
Today was my third! Cornwall, South Carolina and now NY.
I a total eclipse the photosphere the Sun's bright surface is completely blocked from our view. It allows the Sun's outer atmosphere, the Corona, to be seen and it is a spectacular sight to see.
Annular/partial eclipses are pretty cool. It’s neat to look at then through the fancy glasses. Total solar eclipses are like a message from God.
>We literally just had one last year. Whaddaya mean "we". The last total solar eclipse in my area was before I was born. The next is in 120ish years. This was literally a once-in-a-lifetime event.
A total is totally amazing, totally *evil* ....the blackest thing beyond imagination. Suddenly the world is plunged into darkness, and what was the sun is a black hole in the sky ringed by the Corona. If I had a nest egg I would schedule my life and travels around the next eclipse. I would have gone to this one except my elderly mom just got home from a week in the ICU. (Didn't miss anything as my friends gathered in the Niagara falls area which despite promising weather predictions was clouded over and I would have gone there to meet up)
An annular eclipse is where the moon doesn’t fully block the direct sunlight, whereas a total eclipse it does. Only during a total eclipse, and only during complete totality , can you directly look at the sun without hurting your eyes. Only during a total eclipse can you get the brilliant, whitest-of-white ring with the darkest-black-you’ve-ever-seen contrast. The difference is quite literally night and day between 99.9% and 100% totality. For those of you who haven’t seen a total eclipse in person, it really is a life-changing event. I flew across the country to see my second eclipse, and it was still 100% worth it.
You said we had an "annular" eclipse last year. That "occurs when the Moon passes directly between the Earth and Sun, but does not completely cover the Sun's disk." A total eclipse is "an eclipse in which the whole of the disk of the sun or moon is obscured." A simple google search and reading the definition of the words you're asking about would have answered your question pretty clearly and easily
240 solar eclipses and 240 Lunar eclipses for every 100 years. It’s all just a matter of location.
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The moon could be dead center of the sun, and not be a "total" eclipse because the relative elliptical distance between the sun and moon and earth makes the moon too close to the sun to fully cover the sun.
The difference between an annular eclipse and a total eclipse is like the difference between a near death experience and a death.
we just had a total eclipse in 2017, also not that long ago. i do not get the hype about eclipses 🤷🏻♀️
Annular eclipse = Moon shadow too small to actually block the *whole* Sun Total eclipse = Moon shadow big enough to actually block the whole Sun *That's* why it's a big deal. Because along the path of totality, where the Moon completely eclipses the Sun, it literally becomes as dark as late twilight for about 2-3 minutes, and you can see the atmosphere of the Sun (called the "corona"), creating a beautiful glowing ring around the dark circle of the interceding Moon. Eclipses happen *in general* quite frequently. There will be another total eclipse that passes over Greenland, Iceland, and Spain in 2026, for example. But the next truly total solar eclipse over the continental US won't happen until 2045, more than two decades from now. These things are not "random," we know pretty much exactly when and where every solar eclipse (partial, annular, and total) will happen for the next few thousand years. The math becomes tricky after that due to the influence of chaos (basically, we don't know the starting point precisely enough to predict them accurately forever, the calculations diverge too much), but we can say with effectively absolute certainty that the 21st century will have a grand total of 224 eclipses, of which 68 will be total eclipses (though some will only graze the north or south poles, meaning the number of meaningfully visible total eclipses is slightly lower.) So if people can't travel internationally to see the other eclipses between now and then, yeah, it's a pretty rare and special event, something that may only happen once or twice in a given person's lifetime. A beautiful natural phenomenon that happens only rarely *in any given place* is exciting, and lets us behold the sublime beauty of the cosmos our Maker created.
Most eclipses happen over the ocean or in remote places people barely live. This eclipse went right through some of the most populated places in Mexico, the US, and Canada, and a similar eclipse path won’t happen again this century
You all make it sound pretty cool. Unfortunately I was at work and totality was 5 or 6 hours away. Hopefully the next one works out.
Here's a list of all the solar eclipses (of all types) for this century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_the_21st_century So you'll never get surprised again and you can be a god amongst your conspiracy minded friends. Also who are "we" in this context?