total solar energy The solar eclipse will hit North America on April 8th. Dubbed the “Great North American Solar Eclipse,” the solar eclipse will be visible from 13 U.S. states and parts of Mexico and eastern Canada. But it won’t look the same for everyone.
For those who live in the path of a total solar eclipse (the projection of the Moon’s shadow on the Earth’s surface), this celestial event is sure to delight. For everyone else, experiencing a total solar eclipse requires extensive planning…if you’re organized, it should have happened by now, but let’s face it, it probably hasn’t happened yet.
Personally, I’m considering Lexington, Kentucky as my viewing location. I’ve read that the eclipse there will be a “deep partial eclipse,” but having never witnessed a solar eclipse before, I’m not sure if that’s good enough. To find out, I found a nifty eclipse simulator that helps users imagine what an April eclipse would look like from any city, town, mountain, or desolate land in the Northern Hemisphere. To let your imagination run wild as you “try” different locations, the simulator lets you choose from over 50 landscapes to match your desired atmosphere – a city skyline, snow-capped mountains or a tranquil lakeside. You can drag the sliders on the timeline and watch the sun and moon slide across the screen until they merge into one as the sky turns a dark blue.
The tool is based on centuries-old astronomical calculations and modern data and was created by Dan McGlaun, a retired Purdue University mathematician and self-proclaimed geek who has been chasing eclipses since he was 10 years old. So far, McGraun has witnessed 15 eclipses from incongruous places like airplanes and cruise ships. “I went to Kenya to watch the 11-second solar eclipse and it was the best day of my life,” he said.
The eclipse simulator is an add-on feature to McGraun’s main website, through which he sells eclipse safety glasses. (If you plan on looking up at the sky during the eclipse, these shields are an absolute must.) But it only takes a minute on the phone with McGlaun to understand that the simulator is definitely your brainchild, and the safety glasses are definitely yours, too. Brainchild. Businesses exist to finance them.
In 2017, McGraun developed a smartphone app that allowed people to select a location to view the solar eclipse on a map of the United States to see if the location they selected was in the path of that August’s total solar eclipse. Now, he’s taken his efforts to “spread the eclipse” a step further by building a more sophisticated simulator that’s educational.
It took me less than a minute to understand that I would not be spending April 8th in Lexington, Kentucky, for the simple reason that a partial solar eclipse—regardless of “depth”—was nowhere near as good as the total solar eclipse I would see So impressive (on my screen) are places like Dallas, Texas, or Mazatlan, Mexico. Other notable locations along the path of totality include Russellville, Arkansas; Carbondale, Illinois; Indianapolis, Indiana; Cleveland, Ohio; Erie, Pennsylvania; Buffalo, Rochester, and Sierra, New York Mounds; northern Vermont; central Maine; central New Brunswick, Canada; and central Newfoundland, Canada.