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If you read nothing else about the eclipse, please read this long rant,
and check out the maps so you can see how
close to your home the eclipse path comes. Let me explain. The basics of a
total eclipse are that the moon goes in between the sun and the earth, and
as the moon 'moves' across the face of the sun, its very thin shadow
passes along a "path" on the ground. (This is represented by the little
black dot in the animation above.) You have to be in that path in
order to see the "total" eclipse. If you're outside it, you'll get to see
a partial eclipse (boring!) -- and if you're just barely
outside the path, you'll see a very deep partial eclipse -- but even that
is not anything you'd even want to leave your desk at work to see!
Go here to see an animation
program we put together that shows what you can expect to see from various
locations in the US.
We cannot stress this enough - if
you're in the path, you see what is perhaps one of the most
phenomenal sights that human eyes can convey to a brain! If you're not in
the path, even by only a mile or so (!!!!!), you will come away wondering
what in the heck we even bothered to make this site for! And you will have
completely missed the whole show. People fly to the remotest deserts,
jungles, islands -- frozen, desolate, and mosquito-infested places - just
to be in the path of a total eclipse. So please, please, please:
walk, run, fly, drive, hike, roll, thumb, or cycle yourself into the
path on eclipse day, and you will not regret it! Miss it, and you'll
have to wait till the next one (in 2024). Take it from us - do not think
that you're "close enough" to the path to see something cool. Look at the maps, and if where you are
isn't in the dark band (and as close to the blue centerline as possible),
please please get yourself there by whatever means are necessary!
Even if it's 300 miles or more! People will come from all over the world
to see this grand spectacle, and you already live right here! You will
thank us thousands of times over for having talked you into it, and you
will thank whatever it is you believe in that you got to see what you saw
while standing in the shadow. Please take it from me - I've kissed the Blarney Stone, and seen
the Grand Canyon, Victoria Falls, Ayers Rock, the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall, the Taj Mahal, the West
Edmonton Mall, the Pyramids in Egypt, the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Stonehenge, the giant Sequoia Trees, Death Valley, the Panama
Canal, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Meteor Crater, Yellowstone, the North Pole, the Midnight Sun over the Arctic Ocean, Shakespeare's grave, the Alps in
Switzerland, the Grand Mosque in Istanbul, the geysers in Iceland, the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel
tower, the CN tower, Sydney Tower, Shanghai Tower, the Ring at
Bayreuth and the Met, the Berlin Philharmonic, and my kids being born -- and I'm not kidding: A total
eclipse is a spectacle to rival them all!
Get thee to the path....
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