Why People Are Already Talking 'Great American Eclipse,' 2 Years Away

It’s not often that there’s this much hype for something so far in the future.

But the “Great American Eclipse” — the August 21, 2017, total solar eclipse that will be the first over the continental United States in 38 years — already has scientists, news outlets and just your average Americans buzzing.

CBS is telling readers to “Look Up!” at the eclipse, and even MTV is urging viewers to “Get Ready” forthe eclipse. All of this within the span of a couple of days about an event still nearly two years out.

Solar eclipses happen when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun. “Totality” occurs when the moon completely covers the sun, temporarily casting a portion of the Earth’s surface in daytime darkness.

Animals begin to go to sleep, crickets start to chirp and even a few stars can be seen. It stirs an emotional reaction for many people, causing some to be moved to tears.

News articles indexed by Google about a solar eclipse have spiked since last week; Friday marked exactly two years until the eclipse:

It’s a sign of just how big of an event this is going to be once it actually gets here.

“There was an eclipse in 1999 across Europe. It’s claimed that it was the most-watched eclipse in human history, mostly because it crossed a lot of major cities that are highly densely populated, and we just have more people than we did on Earth even a thousand years ago,” Phil Plait, an astronomer who was a part of the Hubble Space Telescope team and is now a popular science blogger, told Patch.

“This one could be even more viewed. It wouldn’t surprise me if this breaks the record for the most-viewed eclipse in human history.”

The 1979 total eclipse, the last one seen over the United States, swept across only parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and North Dakota before darkening Canada.

The eclipse itself may seem to some as odd as it is rare.

Here’s what could confuse people: the eclipse will make a coast-to-coast run, tracing a path from the west coast of Oregon and then heading out over the coast of South Carolina.

That means that Pennsylvania residents, including Montgomery and Chester County, will not see total darkness.

You can see its path in this map from NASA.

But here’s the catch: while the eclipse will darken a large swath of the United States, most U.S. residents won’t see it -- at least not all of it -- because few highly populated areas are in its path.

Kansas City and St. Louis will see total darkness for a few seconds. Nashville and Charleston will get about two minutes and a minute and a half, respectively.

Otherwise, the only places that will see the total eclipse are small towns and wilderness over the country’s heartland.

Those in the path of the treat are already preparing for a crush of visitors.

North Platte, Nebraska, held a meeting last week to discuss, among other things, how to accommodate the influx of tourists, how much security to hire and how much advertising to buy.

“There are already parts of the United States who are way ahead of us in marketing,” Lisa Burke, executive director of the town’s visitors bureau, reportedly lamented at the meeting, which would seem to suggest that planning is already underway in similar towns across the country.

Since they occur essentially at random on the globe, solar eclipses generally happen over the water or only small portions of land. It’s rare to see one like this spend so much time over land.

So while the public is only just starting to take notice, scientists track solar eclipses hundreds of years in advance. They’ve been anticipating this one for awhile.

“I’ve been hearing about this eclipse for quite some time, because it’s sort of a major event,” Sarah Jaeggli, a solar physicist with NASA’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate, told Patch.

Jaeggli has seen two total solar eclipses as part of her research, one in Libya and one in the Marshall Islands, a remote island chain in the Pacific ocean.

In Libya, she said, people showed up in buses to witness such a rare event, bringing music and “kind of a festival atmosphere.”

Not so in the Marshall Islands.

“They weren’t interested at all. They were not convinced that the eclipse would happen,” Jaeggli said. “They all stayed indoors and wouldn’t let their children watch during the eclipse. It was a very unexpected attitude.”

Culturally, it’s expected to draw much more the former reaction than the latter across the United States.

“A lot of people feel closer to nature when things like this happen,” Plait said. “A natural event that’s spectacular, brief, rare?...”

“Yeah, this is going to be a big deal.”

Image via NASA