this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_the_21st_century
Not a lot of TOTAL eclipses. And the next US total is 20 years.
Unless you can afford to fly (and stay) internationally, it might very well be once in a lifetime to witness totality.
South East Asia here, no total eclipse for the next 200 years. And I slept through the last one when I was in middle school, FML.
2035 is reasonably promising, depending on where you are
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_September_2,_2035
Nope LOL. The edge is barely skate by where I live.
Trust me, I looked it up with a whole bunch of "eclipse prediction" websites.
Oh are you like at the equator? Yeah that's gonna be a really hard location to get and you will need to go north or south a bit for most of them.
You're so knowledgeable. And yes, I'm ~2500km up north from the equator.
Nah, the crash of the 1999 AN10 in August, 2027 keeps humans survivors from seeing that one.
There are two crossing through eastern Australia in the next decade, maybe take a trip there?
We aren't sure yet, but we are likely the only place in the galaxy that has the perfect total eclipses. If humanity ever manages to unite and take to the stars, there's a strong argument to be made for our flag to just be a black field with a solar corona. We may even have to worry about too much extra-terrestrial eclipse tourism.
Solar eclipses on Mars are underwhelming.
I can see eclipses being an interstellar tourist attraction.
I was talking to some friends about it actually. Probably makes for memorable vacations.
I'm frankly dubious about this - tons of extrasolar planets will have moons, and those moons will occlude their stars. what in any way makes earth special? citation requested.
The extremely unlikely, a d actually entirely coincidental, fact that our moon happens to be precisely the right size and distance from the sun and moon to perfectly obscure it.
If it were further away or smaller, it wouldn't block it out completely and we'd just get annular eclipses, which doesn't let you see the corona, just a ring you shouldn't look at directly without eye protection.
If it were bigger or closer, it would obscure the corona and we'd just see darkness.
Stellar bodies lining up is perfectly normal and commonplace. Them being exactly the right size shape and distance to create a total eclipse is fantastically unlikely.
Doubly so when you consider that the moon is slowly moving away, and so a long time ago the moon was too big in the sky, and in about 50 million years it'll be too small.
Something so unlikely happening during the time there's intelligent life on the planet that can understand and appreciate it is, literally and figuratively, astronomicaly unlikely. 😀
The formation of our moon isn't terribly likely to happen frequently. Also the moon, star, and planet have to be in the correct places. Our moon won't create perfect eclipses in a few hundred million years
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/earth-has-the-solar-systems-best-eclipses/
No planet in our solar system has a moon large enough to completely eclipse the sun from the planet surface POV
Source?
It looks like you would get a perfect solar eclipse on Mars if Pandora were spherical.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2018/08/10/earth-is-not-the-only-planet-in-the-solar-system-that-gets-total-solar-eclipses/
If there's another planet in our solar system where you can almost get an earth-like "perfect" solar eclipse, I find it highly unlikely that there isn't a single other planet in our entire galaxy where one might also see a "perfect" solar eclipse.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/04/08/solar-eclipse-mars-phobos-nasa-photos/73242215007/
~~Forbes messed up their math.~~
Both of Mars' moons are either too small or too far from the planet to completely occlude the sun, but your article is about a moon of Saturn.
I'm not sure I would count a planet that no human or rover has a chance to see the eclipse, and at that distance the sun is TINY, but I'll bet that Pandora completely occludes both the sun and it's corona.
It's highly likely that no other planet in the galaxy has the correct conditions for a perfect solar eclipse.
yup, they think they can speak for literally billions of stars with potentially billions and billions of planets... seems like a tall order lol
It's also massively over hyped imo. I did the last one and the coolest part was the shadows, but the actual darkness was super underwhelming. Hearing everyone say it was like some spiritual experience makes me roll my eyes a bit. It got dark for a bit. It does that shit every day smh.
People aren't amazed because it gets dark for a bit. People are amazed because it reminds us that the sun and the moon are real 3d objects incredibly far away, not just images in the sky. I can understand how it is a spiritual experience for a lot of people.
It's also an incredible coincidence (or otherwise, depending on your beliefs) how the distance and size of the two bodies matches perfectly for the total eclipse to be a thing at all.
Technically it would be fine for the moon to be bigger or closer and you'd still get a total eclipse.
It turns out, animals get freaked out when sun does weird thing, and we're animals too
EDIT: I went and it was the coolest thing I've ever seen. That still just means I was bowled over by a rock casting a shadow. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I mean it was cool, don't get me wrong. But greatest thing I've ever seen? IDK, I saw a space shuttle launch live. That was way cooler. Dark Knight in IMAX is a contender. The coolest thing I've ever seen is basically the entire country of Iceland. The Eclipse is maybe top 20.
It's possible I just did the eclipse wrong. I am glad you enjoyed it. I don't quite understand why so many people take it personally that I was not moved by it.
But all that stuff is still true whether you see it yourself or not. I don't quite get this line of reasoning. Were you unsure about the nature of astral bodies before that point?
Again, I have no intention of diminishing your experience, unlike you mine. I am super happy that you had a surreal experience. I just felt extremely underwhelmed personally.
Also, people keep saying this about animals, but I didn't witness that at all. My dog slept through it.
glad it was good for you man. having seen a few.... both full and partial... it was just some thing that happened. I did really appreciate seeing the wiggly shadow bands, was not expecting that, but it isn't anywhere near the 'greatest single thing I've ever seen in my life'. Not even in the top 20.
People like to find meaning in all sorts of things.
Did you forget to look at it?
No one is getting hyped for it being dark outside, they're hyped for being able to see the corona of the sun with their naked eyes.
Maybe that's it, my vision isn't that great. It just looked like a blurry ring of light in the sky to me.
That seems likely, and unfortunate. To a lot of people it looks like all of the pictures that get posted to the Internet after the eclipse, except a fair bit more impactful because it's there. The sky turns dark blue, you see the coronal glow as tendrils of light coming away from the hole in the sky where the sun was a moment before.
Easily one of the more beautiful things I've seen, and I've seen quite a few.
People tend to forget only 37% of US americans have a working passport.
That's because only 63% of us can afford international travel and most of the 37% goes to Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean.