A total solar system The solar eclipse comes to North America on April 8th. The Great North American Solar Eclipse, as it is called, will be visible in 13 U.S. states as well as parts of Mexico and eastern Canada. But it won’t look the same for everyone.
For those living in the path of totality – the projection of the moon’s shadow onto the Earth’s surface – the celestial event is sure to be a joy. For everyone else, experiencing the total solar eclipse requires extensive planning… which, if you’re organized, should have happened already, but let’s be honest, it probably didn’t.
For my part, I had been considering Lexington, Kentucky as my venue. I had read that there would be a “deep partial solar eclipse” there, but since I had never seen a solar eclipse before, I wasn’t sure if that was enough. My search for this led me to a nifty solar eclipse simulator that allows users to visualize what April’s solar eclipse will look like from any city, town, mountain peak, or deserted piece of land in the Northern Hemisphere. To let your imagination run wild when “trying out” different locations, the simulator allows you to choose one of more than 50 landscapes that matches the atmosphere you are looking for – a city skyline, a snow-capped mountain range or a tranquil lake shore. You can drag a slider on a timeline and watch the sun and moon slide across your screen until they become one as the sky turns a murky shade of blue.
The tool, based on centuries-old astronomical calculations as well as modern data, was developed by Dan McGlaun, a retired Purdue University mathematician and self-confessed geek who has been tracking eclipses since he was 10. To date, McGlaun has observed 15 eclipses in inappropriate locations such as airplanes and cruise ships. “I was in Kenya for an 11-second solar eclipse and it was the best day of my life,” he says.
The solar eclipse simulator is a side feature of McGlaun’s main website, through which he sells solar eclipse goggles. (These goggles are an absolute must if you want to look at the sky during the eclipse.) But it only takes a minute on the phone with McGlaun to understand that the simulator and goggles are an absolute labor of love. There are companies that finance it.
In 2017, McGlaun developed a smartphone app that allowed people to select an eclipse viewing location on a map of the United States to find out whether their chosen location was in the path of totality of the eclipse in August of that year . Now he has taken his efforts to “evangelize eclipses” further by building a more complex simulator, this one with an educational bent.
It took me less than a minute to realize that I wouldn’t be spending April 8th in Lexington, Kentucky, for the simple reason that a partial solar eclipse – no matter how “deep” it might be – is by far wasn’t as impressive as the total solar eclipse I saw (on my screen) in places like Dallas, Texas or Mazatlan, Mexico. Other notable locations in the path of totality include Russellville, Arkansas; Carbondale, Ill.; Indianapolis, Indiana; Cleveland, Ohio; Erie, Pa.; Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse in New York; northern Vermont; Central Maine; Central New Brunswick, Canada; and central Newfoundland, Canada.