Today’s APOD shows the partial solar eclipse over Argentina. Timely.
A bit of a bump here. This annular solar eclipse is now less than 8 months away. I plan to be in Monument Valley for it, and my reservations are all lined up. Looking forward to it!
Here is the link to the page there:
6 months away. My reservations are set for Monument Valley, one of my favorite places.
I was able to make some nice reservations, so I’m looking forward to this road trip. First, we have 2 nights at the Grand Canyon North Rim in a rim view cabin. Not easy to get. Has anyone stayed here? Then we have 3 nights at the Monument Valley View Hotel and we finish with 5 nights in Moab. We’ll be exploring these areas. I’m stoked.
The “path of annularity” touches parts of 9 states from Oregon to Texas: OR CA NV ID UT AZ CO NM TX. And 10 countries, from USA to BRA (using the ISO codes): USA MEX GTM BLZ HON NIC CRI PAN COL BRA. Some touches are only small parts. In California only a tiny bit of the far northeastern corner will see annularity. The same goes for Guatemala and Costa Rica.
An eclipse in Monument Valley. Exciting!
Considering where I live it’ll probably be:
<< sun ---- moon — clouds — me>>
Yeah, that’s a major concern: the likelihood of clear skies where you’ll be observing the eclipse.
Sooo … I’d pretty much accepted that I wasn’t going to see this one, given that it’s the middle of the semester and I’m a college professor, but it looks like things may be lining up just right – I have no Friday classes, and Delta just changed its flight schedule from my tiny little regional airport so that I could, plausibly, take a quick weekend trip to Belize. Leave at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, be at the beach by early afternoon, enjoy the eclipse with a side of spiny lobster on Saturday, and have time for a quick swim and a fryjack on Sunday morning before flying back. It sounds like an ridiculously decadent and jet-setty thing to do, but it would totally work, and it wouldn’t actually involve more time and money than a weekend trip to NYC.
The only hitch is that it’s the rainy season. Anybody have thoughts / prior experience with Belize in October? What are the odds of my actually getting to see the eclipse?
You could always charter a private plane…
I’m going to be in southern NM in October and need to figure out if I want to see it near Albuquerque or Roswell.
Where is your college? Is Belize really the nearest place you could go to see it?
I might actually be able to observe this one as it’s a Saturday, I will be in El Paso, and it hits a large swath of west Texas just a little further east of El Paso in the early afternoon. I could perhaps drive to see it.
I’m in Mississippi. Nearest-as-the-crow-flies is probably Texas. I haven’t ruled out San Antonio as an option – it’s one of those cities I’ve always vaguely meant to visit – but I alreadly know I like Belize, and the travel time and costs are about the same (all flights from where I live go through Atlanta, and I hate and fear long-distance driving to the point where it’s probably safer for everyone on the road if I just don’t do it). Probably the most tempting US option for me is Utah, since my brother lives in SLC and could be talked into driving, but it’s a lot farther.
ATL, the nexus and center of all things Delta…
It’s a 3 hour drive from Roswell to Albuquerque. Pick whichever one is closer to where you’re staying. The weather should be clear in both places.
Albuquerque is a fun big city (relatively speaking). Roswell is a quant small town if you ignore all the fake alien stuff. Depending on how long you’ll be there, there isn’t much to do in Roswell.
I’d think the fake alien stuff would make it more fun, if only ironically so. Besides, if you’re at all interested in also seeing other things in the sky, like the stars at night, then Roswell has to be much better for that.
This eclipse is a month away. If anyone will be in/near Monument Valley (Arizona/Utah) and want to meet IRL give me a shout.
Who is going to see this annular eclipse, and where do you plan to be?
If you’re stuck there, you could write and record a nerdy song about it.
I live in the path so I plan to stay where I am. I might drive out a couple of miles to get a better background for photos, or not.
Mobility is very important even if the skies are relatively clear before the eclipse begins. The rapid drop in light & heat can cause some pretty rapid condensation (fog and clouds). Being able to move on down the road or different elevations is beneficial.
This happened to me in the 1991 eclipse on the Kona (leeward/dry) side of the Big Island of Hawaii and I drove to a different part of Mauna Loa and caught most of it. Same kind of thing happened for an annular in 1994 (partial where me and a friend played pitch & putt at Jones Beach during it). A pretty clear day got misty & foggy, the Canada geese flew in to roost and get in our way and every few minutes it would be clear enough to don the glasses and check it out (sometimes it was misty enough we didn’t need the glasses to see it).
I was in Bucharest in 1999. After two really hot & clear days and a cloudless sunrise - my little Celestron scope all set up in front of the university - at about 40% the mists and fog appeared. I was chatting with some students after giving out lots of eclipse glasses and asked them to find a taxi driver willing to drive really fast towards Constanta on the Black Sea if need be.They did and at about 90% we were far enough down the road and ahead of the clouds that we parked at some pig farm for totality.
I’ve noticed this at three eclipses, one total, one annular, and one magnitude .84 partial eclipse. For the total and annular eclipses, the clouds rolled in as soon as they started. For the partial eclipse, some light haze and clouds did blow in, but never enough to actually hide the eclipse. I was able to take a few photos without a filter.
But I never imagined that the eclipses themselves might have contributed to the sudden changes in the weather.
Unfortunately, mobility isn’t really an option here. It’s not like I’d be able to just drive a mile down a country road and pull over, because the roads have abruptly edged ditches rather than shoulders. I think they were built that way because it used to rain so much before the megadrought.
I’ll just have to stick to my plan and hope for the best. I’m not near any major bodies of water, other than a river which is a few miles away, unlike the other three times when I was near an ocean.
Keep in mind, if you’re heading up here, the annularity phase is early, before 9:30 in the morning, and the sun will be at about 18° above the horizon and slightly south of due east. You won’t need to see the horizon, but just don’t plan on being in a forest or ravine.