by The April 8th total solar eclipse is almost upon us. The event will see the sky over a swath of the United States, Mexico, and Canada darken as the moon completely covers the sun along a stretch 115 miles wide (185 kilometers) and 10,000 miles long (16,000 km) on its called the path of totality.
In the United States, the eclipse will sweep from Texas to Maine, passing over several major cities, including San Antonio, Dallas, Little Rock, Indianapolis, Cleveland and Buffalo. Eclipses are not that rare, with total solar eclipses occurring somewhere around the world about every 16 months and partial solar eclipses occurring even more frequently, once every five months or so.
In a recent study conducted by Time and Date in the build-up to April 8, researchers began to discover which cities, if any, in the world experience the most eclipses. The results also add more precision to eclipse frequency estimates.
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The study team examined a whopping 15,000 years worth of eclipse data. This allowed them to improve on estimates set out in 1982 by astronomer Jean Meeus, who studied total and non-annual solar eclipses over a period of 600 years.
“Tracing the footsteps of the famous astronomer Jean Meeus was an exciting project – and a very challenging problem,” Time and Date astronomy team member Frank Tveter said in a statement. “In total, we had to do more than one trillion checks on eclipses to calculate a single number.”
Which cities are the best on the eclipse charts?
The team’s results suggest that a random city on Earth would experience a total solar eclipse, on average, about once every 374 years. An annular eclipse or “ring of fire” would occur in the same city about once every 226 years and a partial solar eclipse about every 2.6 years.
The results also revealed more details about the “latitude effect” in Meeus’ work which suggests that solar eclipses occur more frequently at high latitudes, around the Arctic and Antarctic circles. Locations near the equator experience a solar eclipse about once every 2.8 years, compared to once every 2.2 years, on average, for Arctic and Antarctic locations.
Why is this? The sun is above the horizon longer at these high latitudes, which means there is more time for solar eclipses. So, statistically, a good place to stay during an eclipse would be Longyearbyen, in Svalbard, Norway, which is the northernmost settlement in the world, although it has a little more than 2,000 people.
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The researchers also found that cities in the Northern Hemisphere are more likely to experience total solar eclipses than those in the Southern Hemisphere.
This is because summer in the Northern Hemisphere, when the hours the sun spends above the horizon in this part of the globe is extended, coincides with the point in the Earth’s orbit at which our planet and the sun are widely separated. . This means that the sun is smaller in the sky and is therefore more likely to be completely covered by the lunar disk in Northern Hemisphere summer.
But the timing of the Earth’s closest approach to the sun shifts throughout the year, on a cycle that lasts about 25,000 years. This means, according to the team, that in about 10,000 years, this point or “aphelion” will coincide with winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and the frequency of solar eclipses will favor the Southern Hemisphere.
No matter how often solar eclipses happen in your neck of the woods and whether you live in Longyearbyen or Pontianak, Indonesia, which sits on the equator, don’t take a chance on seeing any eclipse.
If you plan to see any of these phases of the total eclipse on April 8, the most important thing to consider is how to view it safely. Looking at the sun without adequate protection at any time is harmful to the eyes, so eclipse watchers should take precautions on Monday.
Sunglasses, no matter how dark, cannot protect the eyes from the sun’s effect, so specialist eclipse glasses made from safe materials with sun filters will be needed. If sky watchers intend to view the event with a telescope, special filters will be needed to make this a safe viewing experience.
Our guide to observing the sun safely tells you everything you need to know about safe solar observations.
The Time and Date team is currently working on collecting their methods and results in a full paper that will be submitted to the Journal of the British Astronomical Association.
