Half Moon Full Moon Total Eclipse

[Brian Scarano]

Atree full of leaves casts a shadow full of little holes, places where sunlight passes through, sometimes making rays as reflective material passes through. During the eclipse, these pinholes of light change, becoming crescent waves dancing across the ground as the tree sways.

But wait, shadows? How will there be shadows if the sun is blocked out? Staunton, Augusta County, and Waynesboro are all outside the path of totality, the narrower band of locations where the moon perfectly covers the sun. Instead, we will only get a partial eclipse.

The upcoming solar eclipse will be the second within six months that is viewable from Texas, which will not see another solar eclipse for two decades. On April 8, the sun should appear to be about 93%-95% covered up to those in the Houston region.

But the Space City will come close to seeing the moon completely cover up the sun, according to Angela Speck, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio who serves as the chair of its physics and astronomy department.

The sun should appear between 93%-95% covered up depending on where you are within the Houston region, Speck said, noting that locales northwest of the city will see more significant coverage compared to those to the southeast. During the annular solar eclipse on Oct. 14, when the moon was farther from the Earth and a "ring of fire" was visible to those in the path of totality, Speck said those in the Houston area saw up to 86% of the sun being blocked out.

"It's going to look kind of like a crescent moon," Speck said. "If you block out enough of the sun, what's left is just a crescent of it. That's pretty cool, and it's going to look like a fairly skinny crescent."

The peak of the upcoming eclipse is scheduled for about 1:40 p.m. in the Houston area, according to Speck, who said the sun will appear partially covered for a span of about three hours. The moon and sun will appear to first touch at about 12:20 p.m., she said, with the eclipse event ending at about 3 p.m.

Speck said no one should look directly at an eclipse without special glasses that meet the ISO 12312-2 safety standard, adding that those who obtained glasses for the October eclipse can use them again in April. For those with or without viewing glasses, Speck said there are other ways to enjoy the rare sights associated with an eclipse.

But as long as you're in Houston or close to it, your view of the eclipse likely won't be as spectacular as it could be from other parts of the state. Speck said areas north and west of Austin and San Antonio are projected to be in the path of totality, where the daytime sky will temporarily turn dark.

And because those are densely populated metropolitan areas that already expecting an influx of eclipse-seeking visitors, a day trip to a small town in the path of totality might be more feasible. Among those options are Dew, which is along Interstate 45 about 145 miles north of Houston, and Hammond, which is about 135 miles to the northwest along State Highway 6.

That's partly because, while Texans are getting two solar eclipses within a span of about six months, the viewing opportunity on April 8 will be their last for quite a while. Speck said the next time a solar eclipse will be viewable from the state will be in 2045, and that will apply only to the very northernmost part of Texas.

As a space reporter, I have spent the better part of the past decade floundering back and forth about moving to Florida to live on the Space Coast, where I could attend all the rocket launches and put myself in the thick of where so much space news takes place. But alas, for a number of reasons, both personal and professional, I have remained content where I am.

On that day, the moon will pass directly in front of the sun, casting its shadow onto the face of the Earth, creating nearly four and a half minutes of totality for spectators in its path across North America. Bloomington, like hundreds of cities and small towns along the path of totality, has been preparing for an onslaught of skywatchers on the big day. A true college town, Bloomington is home to roughly 80,000 people, almost half of whom are students of Indiana University (IU). And all 80,000 of us are bracing ourselves.

All that being the case, planning to watch the eclipse from Blomington, or really anywhere along the path of totality in the midwestern United States, comes with a pretty hefty risk. Historical cloud coverage in the region for April 8 does not paint a promising picture for seeing the sun that day, and that fact has been making me anxious.

Following totality, singer, songwriter and actress Janelle Mone is scheduled to perform, capping off the excitement of the day. In addition to the awesomeness that is throwing an eclipse concert at all, Mone has their own unique connection to space. Mone starred in the movie "Hidden Figures," portraying NASA mathematician and engineer Mary W. Jackson.

Darkness. Oh, the sun is going to be eclipsed. That alone is a monumental event. And you know, it happens every year. The [moon] gets in the way the sun every year, but effects some narrow part of the Earth. So, the next one over Indiana will be like 100 years from now. We'll all be dead. I might not be, but you guys are going to be dead the next time. So it's an event. But when you ponder the mystery of you pondered what's taking place in the heavens, it's gargantuan.

"To me, the magic of the eclipse, the extraordinary events it all took in the heavenly bodies to cause this eclipse, should make us ponder the mystery of existence, of our own existence, of the existence of everything else, and how unified everything is," Shatner said.

Submit your photos! If you capture a photo of the April 8 total solar eclipse and would like to share it with Space.com's readers, send photos, videos, comments, and your name, location and content usage permission release to space...@space.com.

Josh Dinner is Space.com's Content Manager. He is a writer and photographer with a passion for science and space exploration, and has been working the space beat since 2016. Josh has covered the evolution of NASA's commercial spaceflight partnerships, from early Dragon and Cygnus cargo missions to the ongoing development and launches of crewed missions from the Space Coast, as well as NASA science missions and more. He also enjoys building 1:144 scale models of rockets and human-flown spacecraft. Find some of Josh's launch photography on Instagram and his website, and follow him on Twitter, where he mostly posts in haiku."}), " -0-10/js/authorBio.js"); } else console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); Josh DinnerSocial Links NavigationWriter, Content ManagerJosh Dinner is Space.com's Content Manager. He is a writer and photographer with a passion for science and space exploration, and has been working the space beat since 2016. Josh has covered the evolution of NASA's commercial spaceflight partnerships, from early Dragon and Cygnus cargo missions to the ongoing development and launches of crewed missions from the Space Coast, as well as NASA science missions and more. He also enjoys building 1:144 scale models of rockets and human-flown spacecraft. Find some of Josh's launch photography on Instagram and his website, and follow him on Twitter, where he mostly posts in haiku.

This simulated multiple-exposure image shows the positions of the sun and moon with respect to the stars over a nine-day period. While the sun moves eastward (from right to left) only one degreeper day, the moon moves eastward by 13 degrees per day. The yellow line is the ecliptic, fromwhich the moon never strays by more than about five degrees.(The sizes of both the sun and moon are exaggerated for emphasis.)

Question: Suppose, for the purpose of this question, that a monthis exactly 30 days. How many minutes later, on each successive day, would you expect themoon to rise, on average? Remember that after a full month (30 days), the moon should riseat the same time as originally (neglecting seasonal variations).

The simple explanation of all these observations is that the moon shines by reflected sunlight.It's spherical in shape, with half of the sphere illuminated by the sun at any given time.How much of this half we see, however, depends on our viewing direction. When the moon and sunare near each other in our sky, we're looking at the moon's dark side so we don't see it atall ("new moon"). When the moon is opposite the sun in our sky, we're looking at the moon's illuminated side so we see a full moon. At other angles we see part, but not all, of themoon's illuminated side. The illustration below shows how you can simulate the moon's phases usinga ball and a strong directional light source to simulate the sun.

The moon's new and crescent phases occur when the sun is more or less behind the moon, fromour perspective. Just looking at these phases, therefore, tells us immediately that themoon must be closer to us than the sun. There's even a way to estimate how much closer it is,as I'll explain below.

Left: Total solar eclipse, showing the solar corona and several red prominences around theedge (Luc Viatour). Center: Partial solar eclipse (Michael Mortensen).Right: Annular solar eclipse, when the moon is too far away to completely cover the sun(Sancho Panza).

Remember, though, that the moon can wander as much as five degrees to either side of the ecliptic.In most months, therefore, the new moon misses the sun (from our perspective) by a few degrees, to one side or theother, as it passes. But the moon's path crosses the ecliptic roughly twice each month, and a solar eclipseoccurs when the sun happens to be there during the crossing. There's a good chance of this aboutonce every six months. Even then, however, perfect alignment requires that you be somewhere alonga narrow path across earth's surface, usually less than 300 km wide. And even then, the moon's disc isn't always quitebig enough to cover the sun, because both of their apparent sizes vary as their distances from earth vary slightly. When the moon is too far and/or the sun is too close, yet the alignment isgood, we call the event an annular eclipse. Otherwise, if the moon covers only part of the sun,we call it a partial solar eclipse.Whether the eclipse is total (or annular) or not, a partial solar eclipse is usually visibleover a wide area about twice each year. I've seen several partial solar eclipses over the years, and if you're oldenough, you probably have as well. I've never been in the right place to see a total solar eclipse,but I'm looking forward to the one that will come through much of the U.S. on August 21, 2017.

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