Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’ll more than likely know that a unique celestial event is occurring today.

A solar eclipse will be occurring across most of the United States during the daylight hours, visible throughout all 48 contiguous states.  In our area, while we won’t experience a “total eclipse”, we should still experience a partial one.  The big show will occur locally between 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM EDT on Monday, April 8^th.

Now for those of you who slept through their high school or college Astronomy class (or for those who hear the word “Astronomy” and answer with “I’m a Virgo!”), a solar eclipse occurs when the orbiting moon passes between the sun and the earth, blocking the sun while it moves across the sky.  Now, I know for the “flat-earthers” out there (and there are surprisingly still quite a few of you), this may seem like sort of government conspiracy, but I assure you, in this case, science trumps your five-minute internet search results from the tinfoil hat brigade.

As you may have guessed, this is a pretty rare event.  The last time we experienced one in the States was way back in August 2017, and we won’t see another one in the lower 48 until August of 2044, so even if you’re not into science and nature, its still worth a slight pause in your daily activities to take note of it.  Locally, they are even letting the kids out of school early today so that they can be home when it occurs.

Suffice to say, one shouldn’t just gaze up at the sky and watch this anomaly with the naked eye (unless you don’t enjoy your current vision or are an ex-president).  Directly viewing an eclipse should only be done with specialized glasses (probably being offered by your local library or other science club) or through a pin-hole projector.  You can even look at the shade under a tree or use a kitchen colander (the light traveling through the holes will still show the blockage of the sun).  Enhance the image by casting the shadow onto a white piece of paper for even better results. 

The weather report calls for partly to mostly cloudy for the big event, so this whole hullabaloo may for naught if the view is obscured by clouds, but meh, what are you gonna do?

There’s always 2044.

(Author’s Note: I’m going to take a short break from my blogging duties next week, so look for more posts the week of 4/22/24).