What Makes Tomorrow’s Solar Eclipse So Special?

The total solar eclipse that will be seen tomorrow (Monday) from a 115-mile-wide (185-km-wide) swathe of Mexico, the United States, and Canada has been described as a once-in-a-generation event. You’ll need to wait until 2044 to view another total solar eclipse in the contiguous United States.

Tomorrow afternoon (April 8, 2024), the moon, sun, and Earth will become perfectly aligned, with the moon blocking out the sun’s light and casting a shadow on the Earth below. For those in the path of totality, the sky will darken to twilight and the temperature will drop, with stars and planets (especially Jupiter and Venus) visible in the sky. Perhaps the biggest attraction of a total solar eclipse is being able to view the sun’s corona, the sun’s crownlike outer atmosphere. Plumes of solar gas and prominences may also be visible during the totality.

Even within the path of totality, the duration will depend on your location. In some places, it will be just a few seconds, while in others, the total eclipse will last three or four minutes. If you’re not in the path of totality, the sky won’t get particularly dark during the eclipse. In fact, even when the sun is 99% obscured, it will simply seem like a particularly cloudy, overcast day.

If the constant media coverage of the upcoming eclipse is giving you déjà vu, that’s because it’s only been 7 years since the most recent one was visible in North America. However, before that, the last total solar eclipse in the U.S. was in 1979.

Unlike in 2017, when the longest duration of totality was 2 minutes and 42 seconds, quite a few places will have totality for four minutes or more. And compared to 2017, tomorrow’s eclipse will feature a bigger, darker shadow due to Earth being slightly closer to the moon during the eclipse. It is also taking place close to the solar maximum, making this eclipse more dramatic than the 2017 eclipse.

This eclipse is likely to be viewed by many more people than the 2017 eclipse, which had a path of totality crossing the homes of 12 million Americans, compared to this year’s 32 million. It will cover more significant urban areas, including Dallas, Little Rock, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Buffalo. Some 150 million people, including residents of New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston, live within 200 miles (322 km) of the path, with many of them likely to travel to see it.

(Not just any) total eclipse of the sun: