The moon’s shadow will cast a path of daytime darkness as it traverses the country on a narrow path from Texas to Maine during April 8’s solar eclipse.
Those located inside the 115-mile-wide corridor known as the “path of totality” will experience a total eclipse, says Northeastern professor Jonathan Blazek.
If it’s not cloudy, stars will appear in the sky. Light will come from the west, like dawn in reverse.
An interactive NASA map shows the path of totality extending from Texas through a corner of Oklahoma, across Tennessee and southern Missouri and Illinois before traversing Indiana, Ohio, a corner of Pennsylvania, and upper New York, Vermont and New Hampshire and then sweeping across mid and upper Maine.
“It’s cutting through the upper Northeast and skipping the coast. So you have to get away from the coast,” Blazek says.
Map users can use toggles to see how long the moon will completely block out the sun in different cities as well as the length of totality, the time of the eclipse and whether weather conditions will be conducive to viewing.
The map also shows how much of the sun will be blocked outside the path of totality, from 34% in Oakland, California, to 91% in Boston.
“If you’re a little bit off the track, you’ll see a partial eclipse,” says Blazek, an assistant professor of physics who specializes in obervational and theoretical cosmology.
In many locations, it may look like the sun is a cookie with a bite missing.
NASA says that solar eclipses occur when “the moon passes between the sun and Earth, casting a shadow on Earth that either fully or partially blocks the sun’s light in some areas. This only happens occasionally, because the moon doesn’t orbit in the exact same plane as the sun and Earth do.”
The last solar eclipse occurred in 2017 and the next one visible in the continental U.S. won’t happen until 2044, Blazek says.
An annular eclipse occurred last year. That type of eclipse happens when the moon passes between the sun and Earth when the moon is more distant from the Earth than average, making the sun look like a ring of fire around the moon.
The only time viewers can remove their eclipse glasses is when the moon totally blocks the sun for a few minutes inside the path of totality, Blazek says. “When totality occurs, the sun is 100% covered.”
If weather conditions permit, viewers in the path of totality should be able to see the corona, which Blazek says is the outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere, considered to be outside the surface of the sun.
Except for the moments of totality — which can be nearly four minutes in some locations — viewers should be wearing eclipse glasses, and that goes for viewers of the partial eclipse, Blazek says.
“Even a little bit of the sun has these dangerous ultraviolet rays,” Blazek says.
Don’t expect Boston to be cast into darkness even with nearly total coverage of the sun, Blazek says. “The difference between 90% and 100% is pretty big. You will still see a bit of the sun, and the sun is very, very bright.”
He says the eclipse will last longer in southern states because the shadow of the moon will be traveling more slowly there than in the north due to the curve of the Earth. “You’ll see it for a little bit longer if you’re down in Texas than if you’re in Maine.”
Blazek says he’s intrigued by Delta Airlines scheduling an eclipse-viewing flight along the path of totality.
“The flight gets you above the clouds. And it gives you more time, because you’re essentially chasing the shadow.”
The only passenger jet that could keep up with the eclipse, which moves at 1,000 to 1,500 miles an hour, was the now-defunct Concorde, Blazek says.
“If you’re in a plane that is traveling 500 miles an hour, you can’t keep up with it, but you can stay closer to it for longer. You’re talking about getting an extra 50% or possibly even a factor of two longer in the path of totality because you are chasing it. You are up to twice as long under totality.”
Getting a room in the path of totality may be too late already. Many hotels are sold out and a one-bedroom room at a hotel in Burlington, Vermont, on April 7 was going for more than $1,000.
For some people, splitting the cost and driving for hours might be worth it.
“It’s rare that you get an eclipse that lasts for this long and really cuts across the U.S. so completely,” Blazek says.
Written by Cynthia McCormick Hibbert.
