Get ready for the April 8 total eclipse of 2024!

By Chuck Sanders

Photo by Vanderbilt Professor Matt Tyska on Aug. 21, 2017, in Gallatin, Tennessee.

North America will enjoy a rare treat this spring. A total eclipse of the sun will start in Mexico around noon and move northeasternly, passing San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas, bisecting Arkansas, hitting southern Illinois, doing a bullseye on Indianapolis, slashing through northern Ohio, tracking lakes Erie and Ontario along the U.S./Canada border, shooting through northern Maine, then dashing through New Brunswick and Newfoundland in the late afternoon. See the NASA map here.

The last total eclipse here in the U.S. was in August 2017 and tracked in a southeasterly direction just north of Nashville. My lab hosted a picnic for our 80 closest friends and made a day of it. The weather was glorious and a great many found the experience to be deeply moving. If you are near the path of totality or can find the time and the means to travel thereto, I don’t think you will regret it—provided the weather gods cooperate! The next total solar eclipse in the lower 48 states is not till 2044!

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