Solar Eclipse - April 8th, 2024!

[Jeffrey Alexander (Arlington Astronomy Nights)]

Hi all,

We’re just a little over a month away from the “Great American Solar Eclipse”.  Here in Arlington, the Sun will be almost 93% obscured by the Moon, but you could drive three hours north (setting aside the traffic jams) to get within the path of totality of the eclipse.

Assuming you aren’t driving somewhere (and no clouds) you’ll be able to see the partial eclipse easily from here with almost all of the Sun getting blocked.  The eclipse starts at 2:16pm in Arlington when the Moon, from our perspective, will begin to move in front of the Sun.  The Moon will gradually cover more and more of the Sun, reaching a peak of 92.87% at 3:29pm. For much of this time, the Sun will be about 45º up from the ground, or about half-way to direct overhead and in the south-west sky.  After 3:29, the Moon continues to move, but off the other side, gradually restoring more and more of the Sun until the last point of apparent contact between the two occurs at 4:39pm.

You can learn a lot about the path of the eclipse and what it will look like on this site: http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2024_GoogleMapFull.html

See the American Astronomical Society’s site for safe viewing tips and also or their list of vetted and semi-vetted eclipse glasses vendors.

If you need to buy some eclipse glasses (and if you want to use them, it would be good to buy them sooner rather than later), I recommend shopping from this list: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?q=eclipse%20glasses. Those are all from vetted companies that conform to the ISO 12312-2 standard and take the guess-work out of whether imported glasses will fully protect your eyes or not.  If you have some old eclipse glasses left from the last eclipse that have been bumping around in a drawer getting scratched, it is time to get new ones.  If they’ve been carefully protected, you can probably still use them - but make sure there are zero scratches, folds, holes, etc that might inadvertently let some of the harmful light from the Sun through to your eyes. When in doubt, get new ones — you only have so many eyeballs.

Happy viewing, and clear skies!

Jeff