No, a solar eclipse, by definition, cannot EVER happen at night. It can happen just at sunrise or sunset though.
August 11, 1999. That was the one I saw just outside Paris. Paris was scheduled for 99+%, so I rented a car and drove north east, into the track of totality. Absolutely worth it.
Not often, I said, but at least once it’s bound to have. What about daylight savings time?
I mean, terrestrial eclipses (where the earth’s shadow blocks out the sun) sometimes happen at night. It would be really bizarre if a solar eclipse never happened at night.
Is this a woosh?
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes in front of the Sun. In order to see the Sun, it needs to be above the horizon, hence: daytime. For this eclipse, it will occur at night - for people on the other side of the globe (who won’t be able to see it).
Google spat up an eclipse calculator when I searched and I input details from the May 30, 1984 eclipse that I remembered. I punched in the data for where I was observing from and saw it was “only” 94.381% coverage.
I remember being at school on one of the last days of our school year and all of us were walked outside to stand around in the parking lot without any idea of what was about to happen. I was damn impressed with 94+% eclipse coverage.
So I punched in the coordinates for my mother’s house where I will be watching August’s show. Totality right over her house for 2 min 30 seconds. Sweet
Cannot wait for totality. Should be a damn fine show.
The only thing that’s bizarre is your lack of understanding of how these things work. In order to have a solar eclipse, you need both the sun and the moon to be at or above the horizon, i.e. during day time. Whenever the sun is below the horizon it’s night time. Unless you’re referring to people on the other side of the planet, who can’t see the eclipse. For them, there’s no eclipse, because it’s night. And no, daylight saving time has nothing to do with it.
Dammit, I was going to post again and say that I was going to stop before I earn a warning. Hopefully it’s not too late.
At least Left Hand and I both know that the earth’s shadow can only fall on the sun during the day, when the sun is out.
In my backyard. 
What if they’re watching live streaming video of it? And someone comes into their room and asks them what movie they’re watching, and they say, “It’s not a movie, it’s an actual solar eclipse that’s happening right now”. Would they be wrong? 
Yes, they’d be wrong, if the other person is standing in the way.
I get to see a total solar eclipse every day!
Thanks for that calculator link. I remember when I was a child there was an eclipse where we students were allowed outside to observe it–we had dishes of water and looked at the reflection off the surface. It was in the news discussion of that eclipse that I first learned of this upcoming one, and remembered how I looked forward to seeing it. Looking at the paths of eclipses in the right time frame, I see that the eclipse I’m remembering is also the annular eclipse of May 30th, 1984 (when I would have been in the 5th grade.) So I’ve been “planning” on this August eclipse for 33 out of my 44 years.
For the 1984 eclipse, I see that I was around 20 miles or so outside of the zone of maximum coverage. I will be deep inside the path of totality for the August one.
(BTW, assuming that your mother still lives in the same area that she did when you were in school, you have limited your location (and mine) to a narrow strip in Upstate South Carolina.)
Pretty close. Mom does live in that part of the Upstate.
I was living in northeast Tennessee for the 1984 eclipse. I could have sworn that was a total eclipse. It’s one of my more powerful memories from childhood.
Regarding the whole “light pollution” angle - is there a potential issue if you are in an urban area and when the eclipse starts the street lights and other forms of light pollution start turning on automatically due to the darkness?
We’re planning on viewing somewhere in Wyoming, playing for the best weather odds.
I remember that 1984 eclipse, and learning about the one in 2017 which seemed hopelessly in the future (I was 15). And thinking that I wouldn’t get a very good view of it, since I was in Massachusetts and the eclipse would be best viewed in faraway lands like Kentucky and Tennessee. I would have been pretty shocked to know that by 2017 I’d have lived in Tennessee longer than anywhere else in my life.
We’re driving 6 hours from Minnesota to Lincoln Nebraska, the closest we could find hotel reservations last August. (I just checked on my reservations - they’re still in place!). We figure with I-80 we could go east or west quickly, and we’ll drive 30 miles or so south of Lincoln to get more into the totality path. Taking the wife and two grown children and the six-year old granddaughter. The six-year old constantly asks when the moon will come between us and the sun - sounds like she understands it better than some here!
I saw the 1978 eclipse in Winnipeg, while on a college band trip. Our band director knew of the date and event and extended our trip by one day to make sure we didn’t miss it. The students were “buzzing” about it all the way home, even those who thought it would be stupid to wait for it.
No solar eclipses worth a damn near me for many years yet. 2023 seems to be the best, and who knows where I’ll be then?
I might be with **Brynda, ** if she invites me. I should invite her to my backyard, though, since I live in the country with much less light pollution,
I am doing Cycle Greater Yellowstone, and day two we will be in Driggs, ID – one of ten best spots to see the Eclipse.
Brian