This short video shows the path

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX7AxZhPrqU

I guess I could go to Wyoming to view it or else just settle for 80%.





"Oh, I'm bein' followed by a moonshadow, moon shadow, moonshadow---
Leapin and hoppin' on a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow---

And if I ever lose my hands, lose my plough, lose my land,
Oh if I ever lose my hands, Oh if I won't have to work no more.

And if I ever lose my eyes, if my colours all run dry,
Yes if I ever lose my eyes, Oh if I won't have to cry no more.

[Chorus]

And if I ever lose my legs, I won't moan, and I won't beg,
Yes if I ever lose my legs, Oh if I won't have to walk no more.

And if I ever lose my mouth, all my teeth, north and south,
Yes if I ever lose my mouth, Oh if I won't have to talk...

Did it take long to find me? I asked the faithful light.
Did it take long to find me? And are you gonna stay the night?

[Chorus]
Moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow."



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/19/2017 09:53AM by Dave the Atheist.

...and in static form, with a downloadable map: https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/12458

I have family in Vancouver, WA -- not far north of totality.
I'm thinking of visiting in August :)

That singer reminds me a lot of this singer.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BA3SO1sokA

Very excited to experience this. I will travel about an hour and a half to Athens TN area to watch the full eclipse. 2 minutes, 37 seconds of it.

Now who do we put in charge of the weather gods so that it will actually be visible?

Here's some science to do during the eclipse, for those so inclined.

http://www.eclipsemob.org

We live along the path of the eclipse. There are shops selling eclipse glasses. Should be fun.

Your so Vain. You probably think that song is about you.

If you want to know what it will look like from your location, try this:

https://eclipsemega.movie/simulator

I get nearly 45% sun coverage at my home. :)

I understand motels in Oregon in the 100% path have cancelled their normal reservations and rebooked at up to 10 times their going rates.

http://www.kgw.com/news/investigations/hotels-canceling-reservations-for-eclipse-viewing-jacking-prices/424326842

I have a friend who made reservations in Jackson Wyoming last year for two nights. It is not a fancy motel--middle of the road kind of place. Just a place to sleep.

The motel called him and cancelled his reservation and gave him their new "solar eclipse" rate. $10,000.00 per night, 4 night minimum, taxes not included.

Holy crap. I am going to stay home and listen to Bonnie Tyler.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcOxhH8N3Bo

I live in the path and I've heard there's no hotel rooms to be found for several hours in any direction. I know there's none where I work.

I live on the border of totality. My plan is to take the day off work and enjoy the show from my pasture. No driving anywhere.

When I realized that the width of totality is only 70 miles wide, I realized one more possible lie about the historical Americas. The history of Columbus. The story says that columbus calculated the moon's path and predicted when a total eclipse would come. Then he told the local natives that he had the power to darken the sun, and that if they did not treat him as a god, that he would darken the sun permanently. Then at the calculated time and to prove that he had supernatural powers, he publicly told the sun to darken, and it did. From that point afterward, the natives served him with lavish food and other favors, believing that he was a god.

So here is my question. Using the tools available to him at the time, could Columbus really have calculated to within a 70 mile wide accuracy, that his specific location would experience a total eclipse of the sun, and to accurately predict when? And even if he could, what are the odds that Columbus and all of the local natives just happened to live within that 70 mile wide band of totality. Feasible?

In response to azsteve:

Christopher Columbus, in an effort to induce the natives of Jamaica to continue provisioning him and his hungry men, successfully intimidated the natives by correctly predicting a total lunar eclipse for March 1, 1504 (visible on the evening of February 29 in the Americas), using the Ephemeris of the German astronomer Regiomontanus.[

Without a GPS unit and an accurate clock, in a world that had not yet even been fully mapped, how did Columbus calculate that 70 mile band of totality? Could he even know within a hundred mile accuracy, where he even was in relation to anything else, or what minute of the day it was?

I thought of this when asking myself how I could assure I was within that band when taking a trip to that band of totality. The only good answer I could think of is to use my phone with its GPS, and to find a good Android app that would do the job. Columbus had difficulty even landing on the same shores sometimes.

But a lunar eclipse is visible over half of the earth (wherever the moon happens to be up). So there was no 70 mile band of totality to predict.

He didn't calculate anything -- other people had calculated the dates of eclipses far out into the future. He just knew about their predictions.

And you don't need to be in the path of totality (though it's very different for a lunar eclipse as opposed to a solar one) for the sun (moon in the Columbus case) to darken.

I'm some 900 miles from the path of totality for the 8-21 solar eclipse. Yet where I am, the sun is still going to get about half covered by the moon, and it will darken considerably.

I think the Columbus story is total B.S.

from people looking directly at it.

There was a nearly total eclipse in the 1980s, visible from where I was in public health graduate school. The school recommended making a pinhole camera out of a large cardboard box: cut a one-inch hole in one end of the box, tape aluminum foil over it, and make a pinhole in the foil. Then stand with your back to the sun, hold the box over your head (open at the bottom and pinhole toward the sun), and look at the image of the eclipse on the far wall of the box.

Looking directly at the sun, even during an eclipse and even for a second, can cause lifelong, irreversible vision impairment--after all, it's a thermonuclear fireball.

Don't know how those solar Quakers stand it.

I looked at a solar eclipse when I was 13 and burnt holes in my macula that cannot be repaired. It sucks!

With any luck, Yellowstone will explode and make things interesting...

I live in Central New York and we are driving down to Columbia, South Carolina and taking two grandsons to view the eclipse. Hope they don't raise our room rates! I have purchased the advertised-as-safe official eclipse glasses. Does anyone know if they are really safe?

We'll be driving 2 hours into Southern Kentucky to be in the 100% zone and close to the longest duration. I got hotel reservations last Fall because I figure if I wait until that day and just drive up in the morning, the traffic will be horrendous. Good thing, even Nashville is all sold out.