Last week, my family and I traveled to Rexburg, Idaho to witness the the total eclipse; I took these photos of the eclipse August 21, 2017. I hope you enjoy them! My brother took a picture of my family viewing the eclipse — it can be viewed here.
An eclipse of the sun occurs when the moon passes between the earth and the sun, completely blocking out the sun and leaving only a haunting halo — also known as the corona viable.
The sky becomes dark, like dusk, and the stars become visible. This amazing phenomenon lasts just over two minutes, and ‘umbraphiles’ (people who love eclipses) call this brief period of time “totality.”
The remarkable physical factors that make an eclipse possible are that the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, but the sun is 400 times the distance away from the earth as the moon is. Because of this, when the moon comes between the sun and earth, it appears that it is the same size as the sun.
Eclipses of the sun occur only about once per year. Unfortunately, the viewing areas are often in remote, almost impossible to reach areas like islands, the middle of the ocean, or even the poles. The last total eclipse of the sun to occur in the United States was in 1978, but it only was visible in the Pacific northwest.
The total eclipse of the sun this past week covered the entire continental United States from Oregon to South Carolina. The last eclipse that covered the entire continental U.S. was in 1918 — that is what makes the eclipse of August 21, 2017 so spectacular.
The next total eclipse occurring in the United States will be in 2024. The path will be from Texas to Maine.
Other Eclipses will be:
- 2019: South Pacific, Chile, Argentina
- 2020: South Pacific, Chile, Argentina, South Atlantic
- 2021: Antarctica
- 2026: the Arctic, Greenland, Iceland, Spain
- 2027: Morocco, Spain, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia
- 2028: Australia, New Zealand
- 2030: Botswana, South Africa, Australia
The eclipse was a spectacular event that left our family speechless. I am now a complete umbraphile!
Olivia Crutchfield welcomes readers responses to OCrutchfield@spokesman-recorder.com.
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