Solar Eclipse

There is going to be a total solar eclipse today, but it will only be visible over parts of India, Eastern Asia, and Indonesia. What a bummer...unless you're over there. :) The next solar eclipse that will be visible from the U.S. will happen on August 21, 2017. It will be partially visible from New York, but if we want to see the total eclipse, we'll have to head out to the Midwest or down south. Wikipedia has a neat little illustration of the path that the shadow of the moon will take on that day at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_August_21,_2017.

I am seriously considering planning a trip to see that. My kids will be 9 and 12...what a memory that would be (unless it's cloudy!!!!!!). I've never seen a total solar eclipse myself. The closest I got was in May of 1994 when there was a total eclipse that passed over New York about 5 hours north of where I was. So, I got a decent view of a partial eclipse. I built a box projector to view it. I got an empty box, made a tiny hole in it, and put a piece of white paper on the ground. Then I set up the box so that the sun shone through the little hole, and its image was projected on the paper. It was really cool to see the sky darken in the middle of the day. Next time there's an eclipse, or if you're lucky enough to be going to East Asia today, you might want to consider picking up a pair of eclipse shades. They're available at http://www.rainbowsymphony.com/eclipse/exgen.html. You can use them even if there's not an eclipse to see sunspots. Cool, huh?

Photo of eclipse taken by Luc Viatour during the eclipse in 1999. Photo accessed 1/26/09 from http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x176/weirdscience_photos/SolarEclipse1999.jpg&imgrefurl=http://weirdscience.ca/2007/08/10/total-eclipse/&usg=___zddHU_KlhbccnLyDBFe5Jv0OBg=&h=600&w=609&sz=24&hl=en&start=14&tbnid=wWMsGmxoBj6GLM:&tbnh=134&tbnw=136&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsolar%2Beclipse%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den