Don’t forget that there is a total solar eclipse tomorrow. Been wondering where the moon’s been, and why you’ve been having all those lovely clear dark nights perfect for star-gazing? Well, the moon’s been busy preparing for one of its big acts. It’ll pop in front of the sun and bring a little darkness to some regions during the day tomorrow. Put differently, the dark side of the moon will be stealing some of our rays on August 1st.
Who will get to see it? Well, full totality will be available mostly for the “midnight sun” lands, such as northern regions in Canada, Russia, and parts of Western Mongolia and China. Partial eclipse viewing (still exciting) should be seen in places such as North Eastern USA, Europe, and some of Asia.
There’s a nice animation on Wikipedia, and NASA has their usual eclipse resource page dedicated to this event, with maps, maps, explanations, and some, er, maps.
Fascinatingly, there’s a clickable Google map of the path! You can find that here. It’s rather fun to play with.
Enjoy!
-cvj
We had clouds. Better luck next time.
–IP
I made the trip from Beijing out to a small town in Gansu province called Pingliang, which was in the path of totality (this was a looong trip!). Sadly it was a cloudy day, but still the experience of totality was spine-tinglingly exciting. Most in the town I was in knew nothing of what was coming and I could hear shrieks of terror from the darkness. I still have a great desire to see the real thing and will make every effort to get to the next one.