Total Solar Eclipse 2017 - Path Overlap with Eclipse 2024

Total Solar Eclipse 2017
Monday, 21 Aug 2017

Overlap of the Paths of Eclipse 2017 and Eclipse 2024

Many people have become enthralled with the fact that, after so many years without total eclipses, the mainland US will be getting TWO in the space of less than seven years! That’s right, while we absolutely don’t want anyone to miss the great eclipse of 2017, there will be another one coming along in 2024! Our sister site, www.eclipse2024.org, will have much more detail on that eclipse as the time draws closer.

It just makes sense that if two eclipse paths are going to both cross the US, there must be a very lucky spot that will get to see BOTH of them!! WOW! People living there will not have to travel at all to see either eclipse! (And I’ve gone all the way to India just to see 52 seconds of totality!) Talk about luck.

And of course, many die-hard eclipse chasers are wanting to go to that location, so they can say they’ve seen two eclipses from the same location. This actually isn’t a very tough thing to do in one’s lifetime, but those intersection points generally happen to lie in far-off, out-of-the-way locations – if not in the ocean! (The 2006 and 1999 total eclipses were both visible from a location in central Turkey, for example.) This intersection point happens to lie in the WAY FAR out-of-the-way spot of…Southern Illinois.

Actually, to be fair, the overlap of the paths of totality of these two eclipses lies in three states: Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky. Here is a map that shows you the quasi-parallelogrammatical (is that a word?) region that, if you’re in it, you get to see eclipses on two different dates:

And here's a closer view:

Here is a little more information on these two eclipses from the point of intersection of the centerlines (where the blue lines cross):

2017 eclipse:

totality starts 1:20:02pm

mid-totality 1:21:22pm

totality ends 1:22:42pm

2m40s of totality, with the sun 64 degrees up in the sky just slightly west of south!

2024 eclipse:

totality starts: 1:59:00pm

mid-totality 2:01:05pm

totality ends 2:03:09pm

4m9s of totality, with the sun 57 degrees up in the sky just a little bit more west of south!

That’s truly amazing. From this point, both eclipses happen at almost the same time of day, with the sun in almost the same spot in the sky. Of course, good weather will be needed to see both eclipses, but LOTS of people are going to try to get to this very special spot. (Will we be there? Probably not. As cool a thing as this would be to do, the 2024 eclipse goes right over our home base in Indiana, and so weather permitting, that’s where we’ll be.)

So what’s exactly at this very special spot? Not much. We’ll be making an exploratory run down there in the near future (I live pretty close by, relatively speaking), and will file a report for people who can’t make it there themselves. But I’ll bet a dollar that as I’m writing this in 2009, the kind folks of Carbondale, IL (not to mention Makanda, Boskydell, Etherton and Pomona) have absolutely no idea what lies in store for them over the next few years!

But how bad would it be to be somewhere that’s right outside this region? There are localities that are only three to four miles outside both paths, and for those places, to be so close to such a special place on earth, and not get to go to the dance…well, let’s just hope that residents there pack up and position themselves a little more favorably! Remember, you HAVE to be in the path of totality to get the show!