https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_the_21st_century
Not a lot of TOTAL eclipses. And the next US total is 20 years.
Unless you can afford to fly (and stay) internationally, it might very well be once in a lifetime to witness totality.
South East Asia here, no total eclipse for the next 200 years. And I slept through the last one when I was in middle school, FML.
2035 is reasonably promising, depending on where you are
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_September_2,_2035
Nope LOL. The edge is barely skate by where I live.
Trust me, I looked it up with a whole bunch of “eclipse prediction” websites.
Oh are you like at the equator? Yeah that’s gonna be a really hard location to get and you will need to go north or south a bit for most of them.
You’re so knowledgeable. And yes, I’m ~2500km up north from the equator.
Nah, the crash of the 1999 AN10 in August, 2027 keeps humans survivors from seeing that one.
There are two crossing through eastern Australia in the next decade, maybe take a trip there?
We aren’t sure yet, but we are likely the only place in the galaxy that has the perfect total eclipses. If humanity ever manages to unite and take to the stars, there’s a strong argument to be made for our flag to just be a black field with a solar corona. We may even have to worry about too much extra-terrestrial eclipse tourism.
Solar eclipses on Mars are underwhelming.
I can see eclipses being an interstellar tourist attraction.
I was talking to some friends about it actually. Probably makes for memorable vacations.
We aren’t sure yet, but we are likely the only place in the galaxy that has the perfect total eclipses.
I’m frankly dubious about this - tons of extrasolar planets will have moons, and those moons will occlude their stars. what in any way makes earth special? citation requested.
The extremely unlikely, a d actually entirely coincidental, fact that our moon happens to be precisely the right size and distance from the sun and moon to perfectly obscure it.
If it were further away or smaller, it wouldn’t block it out completely and we’d just get annular eclipses, which doesn’t let you see the corona, just a ring you shouldn’t look at directly without eye protection.
If it were bigger or closer, it would obscure the corona and we’d just see darkness.
Stellar bodies lining up is perfectly normal and commonplace. Them being exactly the right size shape and distance to create a total eclipse is fantastically unlikely.
Doubly so when you consider that the moon is slowly moving away, and so a long time ago the moon was too big in the sky, and in about 50 million years it’ll be too small.Something so unlikely happening during the time there’s intelligent life on the planet that can understand and appreciate it is, literally and figuratively, astronomicaly unlikely. 😀
The extremely unlikely, a d actually entirely coincidental, fact that our moon happens to be precisely the right size and distance from the sun and moon to perfectly obscure it.
it’s extremely unlikely and entirely coincidental that your hand is exactly the size to obscure your vision. this doesn’t speak for the odds of it never happening again elsewhere in the universe.
What?
Like, the thing about the hand aside, if something is extremely unlikely, that literally speaks to the odds of it happening. That’s what unlikely means.
Your hand covering your face isn’t coincidental or unlikely; everyone’s hand does and it’s written into your genetics that it should.
There’s no particular reason why a big rock should end up in the particular place it did for us, and it’s surprising that it did.
It’s not likely that it happens often because there’s no reason for it to happen, unlike other interesting phenomenon we see like the big red spot on Jupiter or the hexagon on Saturn. Those should be common because there’s a systemic reason they happened.Like, the thing about the hand aside,
they’re both conjecture based on a microscopic sample size.
Your hand covering your face isn’t coincidental or unlikely; everyone’s hand does and it’s written into your genetics that it should.
ahem, this is so wrong in so many ways.
everyone’s hand does
Nope.
and it’s written into your genetics that it should.
pshew wow nope nope nope.
Nothing in your genes controls a proportional size relationship of your hands to your head. And not everyone has large hands, look at trump for example.
There’s no particular reason why a big rock should end up in the particular place it did for us,
you really don’t understand planetary formation, stability in orbital mechanics and a bunch of subjects. there’s tons of good reasons to suspect the other planets had moons as well; they simply weren’t as orbitally stable as ours ended up.
The only thing your (and other person I’m responding to here) argument has going for it is the extraordinarily difficulty of resolving exomoons orbiting exoplanets around our neighborhood.
I only specified the Milky Way, not the entire universe. It would be highly unlikely that we’d be the only place in the universe that it happened, but the chances are potentially low enough for it being the only one among a mere 100,000,000,000 stars.
The formation of our moon isn’t terribly likely to happen frequently. Also the moon, star, and planet have to be in the correct places. Our moon won’t create perfect eclipses in a few hundred million years
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/earth-has-the-solar-systems-best-eclipses/
sorry, this is hardly definitive. we need more extrasolar surveys before you can posit that we’re the only place. anything else is conjecture.
It’s speculation, but there are only 100 billion stars in the galaxy. I’m willing to bet that we have a 1 in a 100 billion chance of our solar systems creation being different from the others.
that’s pretty silly. you’re suggesting that in our galaxy we’re the only place this happens - what about our solar system is so exceptional, when we see similar planetary formation all over the galaxy?
and also, there are between 200 billion (2×1011) to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe - you gonna write them off too?
you have a sample size of one - one solar system. that’s it.
seems fucking moronic to be making billions or trillions of assumptions based on your experience.
Now you’re just making shit up I never said. Have fun being ignorant.
In fact, in my original comment, and another reply specifically said that I was only talking about our galaxy, and not even our local group.
No planet in our solar system has a moon large enough to completely eclipse the sun from the planet surface POV
do you mean, no OTHER planet? aside from the one we’re on?
also: restricting it to the few rocks in our back yard seems specious as there are literally billion so of other stars out there.
So, what was your point?
Source?
It looks like you would get a perfect solar eclipse on Mars if Pandora were spherical.
If there’s another planet in our solar system where you can almost get an earth-like “perfect” solar eclipse, I find it highly unlikely that there isn’t a single other planet in our entire galaxy where one might also see a “perfect” solar eclipse.
Forbes messed up their math.Both of Mars’ moons are either too small or too far from the planet to completely occlude the sun, but your article is about a moon of Saturn.
I’m not sure I would count a planet that no human or rover has a chance to see the eclipse, and at that distance the sun is TINY, but I’ll bet that Pandora completely occludes both the sun and it’s corona.
It’s highly likely that no other planet in the galaxy has the correct conditions for a perfect solar eclipse.
I find it highly unlikely that there isn’t a single other planet in our entire galaxy where one might also see a “perfect” solar eclipse.
yup, they think they can speak for literally billions of stars with potentially billions and billions of planets… seems like a tall order lol
It’s also massively over hyped imo. I did the last one and the coolest part was the shadows, but the actual darkness was super underwhelming. Hearing everyone say it was like some spiritual experience makes me roll my eyes a bit. It got dark for a bit. It does that shit every day smh.
People aren’t amazed because it gets dark for a bit. People are amazed because it reminds us that the sun and the moon are real 3d objects incredibly far away, not just images in the sky. I can understand how it is a spiritual experience for a lot of people.
It’s also an incredible coincidence (or otherwise, depending on your beliefs) how the distance and size of the two bodies matches perfectly for the total eclipse to be a thing at all.
Technically it would be fine for the moon to be bigger or closer and you’d still get a total eclipse.
Sure, but if the moon was much bigger you wouldn’t be able to see the Sun’s corona. Also, life as we know it wouldn’t be possible, but that’s neither here nor there.
It turns out, animals get freaked out when sun does weird thing, and we’re animals too
EDIT: I went and it was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. That still just means I was bowled over by a rock casting a shadow. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
This is the most wrong comment I have ever seen on this entire fucking website.
I can assure anyone reading this, that this guy is just being a contrarian to seem better than other people.
The eclipse was the single greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
I mean it was cool, don’t get me wrong. But greatest thing I’ve ever seen? IDK, I saw a space shuttle launch live. That was way cooler. Dark Knight in IMAX is a contender. The coolest thing I’ve ever seen is basically the entire country of Iceland. The Eclipse is maybe top 20.
It’s possible I just did the eclipse wrong. I am glad you enjoyed it. I don’t quite understand why so many people take it personally that I was not moved by it.
Space shuttle is pretty cool. Personally wouldn’t put any movie experience in the same universe as the eclipse.
Like it’s entirely possible that we’re the only planet in the galaxy that has eclipses like that and quite possibly the only one in the universe with life on it to witness such an event.
And you’re stood there watching as a incomprehensiblely big ball of rock held above us by nothing more than its own angular momentum happe s to perfectly cross infront of and block out and even possibly bigger ball of fusing gas and do it so perfectly it blocks the disk of the sin but leave the corona and solar flares still visible to the naked eye, you watch the world around start to die in the most unnatural way, the temperature drops and then suddenly its night time in the middle of the day, the animals go crazy, you have a 360° sunset and the sun is replaced by black disk surrounded by s ring of fire. Its pretty much a supernatural event.
So I just really cannot comprehend how anyone could /possibly/ compare it watching a movie. That’s like comparing witnessing the birth of your own child to finding a dollar on the street.
But all that stuff is still true whether you see it yourself or not. I don’t quite get this line of reasoning. Were you unsure about the nature of astral bodies before that point?
Again, I have no intention of diminishing your experience, unlike you mine. I am super happy that you had a surreal experience. I just felt extremely underwhelmed personally.
Also, people keep saying this about animals, but I didn’t witness that at all. My dog slept through it.
glad it was good for you man. having seen a few… both full and partial… it was just some thing that happened. I did really appreciate seeing the wiggly shadow bands, was not expecting that, but it isn’t anywhere near the ‘greatest single thing I’ve ever seen in my life’. Not even in the top 20.
I am so sad for you. Your life must have been a painful disappointment up until today.
Man with people like you it’s really like I never left reddit.
I’m sure everybody thinks you’re really cool because you’re not impressed by a thing that impresses a lot of people.
People like to find meaning in all sorts of things.
Did you forget to look at it?
No one is getting hyped for it being dark outside, they’re hyped for being able to see the corona of the sun with their naked eyes.
Maybe that’s it, my vision isn’t that great. It just looked like a blurry ring of light in the sky to me.
That seems likely, and unfortunate. To a lot of people it looks like all of the pictures that get posted to the Internet after the eclipse, except a fair bit more impactful because it’s there. The sky turns dark blue, you see the coronal glow as tendrils of light coming away from the hole in the sky where the sun was a moment before.
Easily one of the more beautiful things I’ve seen, and I’ve seen quite a few.
People tend to forget only 37% of US americans have a working passport.
That’s because only 63% of us can afford international travel and most of the 37% goes to Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean.
Or go outside at midnight, which is technically a total eclipse.
Uh, how do you figure that?
I guess it’s the sun being “eclipsed” by the Earth? Since it’s between us and the sun?
That’s all I got, and it feels like a hell of a stretch
Yes, lame joke. I have to stop posting before I finish my coffee.
I hear that
Yeah, all I could think of. Not exactly the same thing…
I’d like to solve, Alex:
What are different places on Earth from where the eclipse is visible?
Correct, that’s $200 for you and you still have control of the board
Is akin to people complaining about how the posts in a thread don’t all agree on something, so the forum and its participants are hypocritical.
And you may find yourself behind the holes you cut into some cereal box
And you may find yourself Airbnbing a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself burning down the house
And you might ask yourself, how did I get here?
I’ve got a live feed that’s better than that, don’t have to travel nowhere…
Saw it with totality.
Worth it.
Even if you only get a once in a lifetime shot, do it.
I just did too. It was really cool!
Yeah, after seeing a total eclipse, all those partial eclipses seem like nothing. I’m not sure I’ll even bother watching a partial or annular eclipse again.
Glad you were able to see it without cloud cover. I ended up changing my destination this morning due to cloud forecast.
Did you get to see it when you moved?
Yeah, had a clear view of it :)
Awesome!
I saw the 2017 one and I’m curious what you mean by worth it? Like, worth the effort to go outside and look up? I personally wouldn’t go out of my way to see it again. It was cool but not, $1000 dollar for a campsite cool.
I saw the 2017, and spent well over $3k to travel with my family to see it again today. Granted it was more so I could show it to THEM, but I wanted to see it again too.
Same. Travelled to SC for 2017 with my wife and 1 year old.
Was so awe-struck that I flew my wife, now-7-year old, and 4 year old, to Texas to view it here. Also to check out Houston, Austin, and Dallas. Austin was by far the coolest. Wish I spent more time there. Almost want to move.
Fly on a plane + hotel cool.
It cost us a hotel room at a marginally inflated rate (less than $200). Eclipses aren’t a secret so you can plan/buy ahead, you don’t get caught up in the price gouging. We packed food and drinks in a cooler to save $.
I’m not sure what you mean by going “outside and looking up” other than maybe trying to be dismissive. If you live in the path of totality, going outside and looking up (with appropriate eye protection) is a serious piece of luck, a luxury, and paying “1000 for a campsite” isn’t a problem. If you don’t live in the path of totality then you don’t get to see it - and seeing totality is what’s “worth it”, not just the moon partially blocking the sun.
The comment said “worth it” without specifying what it was worth. That was the reason for me asking what worth it meant. Was it worth traveling? Paying for a flight? Taking a day off? Simply walking outside? The effort to see it is relevant to know what it means when they said “worth it.” Hope that helps you understand.
Don’t know what to tell you. “Worth it” was my personal opinion of the event and efforts to see it, to which you seemed clearly to indicate that such an event was not worth going out of your way for or paying lots of money to see. I don’t understand what me providing further information could offer you.
If you want I’ll gladly share our process, but I cannot help you with your personal feelings of whether our efforts were subjectively “worth it” by your measure.
You did tell me what you did to see the eclipse in your follow up comment, which showed me what you thought was worth it. It seems like you are taking more offense than was implied. My question was simply to learn what the effort was.
As for my personal feelings I don’t need help. I’ve seen a total solar eclipse and know what effort I would go through to see another. There isn’t even an argument her. I was simply looking for clarification which you provided in your follow up.
Eclipses might be a dime-a-dozen, but Halley’s Comet doesn’t mess around. My grandad saw it twice. I hope to, too. It comes once every 75 years. The last time was 1986. The next is 2061. If you were born today, you’d have to live to be 112 years-old to see it a second time.
I was 6 the last time Halley’s Comet swung through. I’m honestly hoping to see it three times.
Planning to live to at least 156? Well, good luck!
I wish you even more luck.
Hmm, it’s possible I will never have been around when it has passed earth. I’m healthy, but life is harsh.
I wish you luck.
Good luck to humanity for 2061
Yeah, this is all provided the atmosphere remains transparent to the human eye in any case.
not if you don’t want to take a plane to see it
you either have to take a plane/long drive or be very lucky
The next total eclipse over the US will be in 2078
2044
2024
That’s soon
It depends on where you’re on the timeline.
Everytime I put Bonnie Tyler on
But there will be a European one in 2026.
The Total Eclipse in Europe will cross southern Spain on the evening of 12th August, 2026. Next total eclipse in Europe will rarely be the following year, 2027, in the southern Spain. Next after will only happen in 2061, over Russia and Kazajstan
And I’m gonna remember this April American one being hyped and I’m half a world away from seeing it.
Some form of frequency illusoon, I’m sure.
200 million people either live in, or within driving distance of, the path of totality.
And lots of hotels and Airbnbs have been booked. So much hype.
that’s a really cool map, thank you for posting 🙂
Proof the eclipse was manufactured by Big Bnb!
Maybe a location thing. The current eclipse passes through NY today, the next one touching NY won’t be until 2079. Texas 2045. So it’s all over the place time-wise between eclipses and location.
Also there are a lot more partial eclipses then total like today.
I propose that the next big NASA project should be to fix those stupid 5° tilt on the moons orbital plane.
Or to make a giant disc that can be positioned in an orbit that totally eclipses the sun and/or our hearts regularly so that when we’re old we can bitch at kids about how total eclipses used to be rare and special but now everyone takes them for granted because NASA wasted a bunch of money making them mundane and that’s what happened to our retirement funds and is why grandparents live in boxes and look forward to the relative comfort of the final box.
Edit: wording
Everytime I do something I’m gonna say to people " that won’t happen for another 150 years".
I’ve seen somebody on Facebook post 2024 has 366 days. This won’t happen again for another thousand years.
Yeah, leap years.
They were right, though.
A year with 366 days and ending in “024” won’t happen for another thousand years.Interestingly, the years 2100, 2200, 2300, and 2400 won’t be leap years, but IIRC, the years 2500, and 3000 will be.
It’s a leap year if it’s:
divisible by 4
AND
( not divisible by 100 OR
divisible by 250
)There are more rules than that, but yeah
You won’t see another comment like this for another 160 years people.
Yeah, but most of those are boring-ass lunar eclipses. The cool one, the solar eclipse, is much rarer.
Even a full solar eclipse happens every 2 years or so.
Total solar eclipses in any given area only happen about once in 300 years I think? (I’m too lazy to go look up the exact math). So unless you are willing to travel the 150 year number isn’t that wrong.
It’s more frequent than that. It’s a cycle that repeats on a very regular basis.
The current eclipse is part of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Saros_139
Doesn’t that say it changes slightly each year, so if you’re on the edge one time you may never see that cycle again and will need to wait until a different full eclipse reaches you?
This was a super cool link. Thanks for sharing!
Ok, but it is possible to travel.
And it’s also entirely possible to travel, paying a premium for accommodations and flights, to an otherwise dull, small town in Texas, and it’s cloudy that day, so you’ve spent thousands of dollars, planning an entire vacation to an uninteresting destination for virtually nothing.
So when one passes by your doorstep, it’s worth taking time our of your day to appreciate it, if possible.
Was it cloudy today?
In some places, yes. In others, no. My point was that it’s an unpredictable risk (and still worthwhile for many people) to travel for an eclipse, and its much more convenient and lower risk to visit when it passes by where you live.
What exactly is your point?
if you have money and free time, then yes
Problem is most of them are over water
Boats exist
Ah yes, surely people are willing to go to the middle of massive oceans on a boat to see the eclipse :P
If they care enough, they will.
“It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10?”
If you have a space ship, you don’t even have to wait for them to hit Earth. There’s constantly total eclipses from each of the planets and moons. I’m very curious what a total eclipse from a body with an atmosphere would look like.
What do you mean? Isn’t Earth a body with an atmosphere? Also, I get your point, but boats are a lot more accessible than spacecraft.
I mean where the eclisping body has an atmosphere. The moon is a solid body with hard edges. It can give total eclipses, annular eclipses (where the entire moon is surrounded by the sun but it doesn’t block the whole thing because it’s farther from the Earth), and partial eclipses (where they overlap but aren’t entirely on top of each other).
Earth would make a different kind of shadow where there would be other variations depending on whether the planet itself and/or the atmosphere are fully or partially covering the sun.
And then there’s Jupiter, where the atmosphere is much larger than the rocky core and the pressure is high enough that it’s not very well defined where the atmosphere transitions from gas to liquid to solid, which would probably give a different effect for eclipses. Though that depends on how opaque or transparent it is, also the sun’s apparent size would be smaller, so it might be kinda underwhelming.
It’s still not really that cool tbh.
Solar eclipses happen every 1-3 years.
But the darkest shadow called the umbra only falls in a very tiny place, slightly bigger than a few Districts and that shadow moves in a line and those places experience total solar eclipse.
So next year there may be another solar eclipse but New York will not experience a total solar eclipse for a long time.
Also two-thirds of the earth is water so most of the time the umbra falls on the sea.
Got lucky here as the clouds melted away enabling a good look from about 30% onward. Reinforced for me the fact that even though we are not even a microscopic part of the cosmic whole this event, also not a microscopic part of the infinity of the universe, is still a very moving and impressive thing
the likelihood that you get an eclipse with totality near enough to you where you can see it.
Is basically zero.
Even with cloud cover, seeing it at home was something special. I know what it’s supposed to look and sound like at that hour. It wasn’t the same as night - I could still see sunlight on the horizon all around me. I could sense that the wildlife was confused by it - all the birds just flew to the tops of the trees and were trying to make sense of what was happening. The bugs went quiet, and we were all whispering for no apparent reason - it just felt appropriate. The slow descent into darkness was unsettling, especially under cloud cover - it felt like we were under the gaze of a passing giant we could not see. I was surprised by how relieved I felt when the light started to return. It wasn’t what I was expecting but the strangeness of it didn’t disappoint, and I don’t think seeing it away from home would have been quite the same.
You put it very eloquently. I had the same feeling - it was a primal uneasiness.
