North America will witness a total solar eclipse on April 8. Find out how and where you can watch it.
Make sure you wear protective glasses when looking at the eclipse. Looking directly at the sun without protective glasses damages the retina.Image: Francisco Canedo/Xinhua/dpa/picture alliance
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Around midday on April 8, 2024, the sky over parts of North America will suddenly go dark for a few minutes.
For the millions of people in the path of the eclipse, sunshine will be blocked momentarily, causing a momentary dark dusk-like state during the prime of the day.
Residents will have to wait until 2045 for the next solar eclipse over North America if they miss this one.
What happens during a total solar eclipse?
When the moon passes directly between the Earth and the sun, it blocks out some of the light traveling to Earth and casts a shadow over its surface. This event is called a solar eclipse.
It's no different than your palm causing a shadow on your face when you try to block the sunshine, only eclipses happen at a much larger cosmic scale.
During an eclipse, observers may notice strange crescent-shaped shadows on the floor, a sudden drop in the temperature, and odd behavior among birds and animals.
How to watch a solar eclipse?
It's not safe to look directly at the sun without specialized eye protection for solar viewing, eclipse or not. Direct radiation from the sun can damage the retina.
Viewing the sun through a camera lens, binoculars or a telescope without a special-purpose solar filter will instantly cause severe eye injury.
Make sure to grab a pair of eclipse glasses, or eyeglasses with solar filters, to watch the event. Glasses that have the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 12312-2 code on the inside are the ones that are safe to wear.
If finding glasses is a hassle, you can make a simple pinhole projector at home, which you can use to see a projection of the sun on a white sheet of paper.
Solar eclipse? Drive carefully.
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Is a solar eclipse dangerous?
A solar eclipse is simply the moon blocking our sun's view — the moon just causes a shadow and won't introduce any new harmful radiation.
A solar eclipse is not a bad omen, but the moon and the sun making a shadow theater. It's safe to go out during an eclipse.
The 2024 eclipse will pass through several major cities in the United States including Dallas, Little Rock, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Buffalo and Burlington.
How long you can observe the eclipse, however, depends on where you're watching it from. According to NASA, the 2024 eclipse is likely to be visible for about four to four-and-a-half minutes along the different locations on its path.
If the weather is good enough, the sun's corona — the outer layer of its atmosphere — will be visible from Earth during a solar eclipse.
However, there could be bad weather — there is a high chance of clouds on April 8, 2024, which could obscure the view of the eclipse.
Some parts of New York, Vermont, Maine and Quebec are expected to have better luck with a clearer view than the southern regions along the eclipse's path.
Edited by: Fred Schwaller
Our sun — A gigantic fireball
A probe called the Solar Orbiter was launched in February 2020. It's so far traveled halfway to the sun and is sending back fantastic images of our star — without which, life on Earth would be impossible.
The probe took these excellent pictures of our sun from 77 million kilometers away. Small solar flares have never before been so clearly visible. As it gets closer to the sun, the Solar Orbiter will specifically investigate these eruptions. It will also research how solar storms — which can cause problems for us on Earth — emerge.
The sun is constantly sizzling, boiling, and erupting. The eruptions are usually small, but sometimes they can be huge. During larger solar storms, billions of tons of electromagnetically charged material are hurled into space and toward the earth. This can have consequences for us. Those eruptions can lead to power cuts or the collapse of mobile phone networks.
Our sun had already been shining for billions of years before mankind even existed. Together with the planets of our solar system, the sun developed from a gas cloud 4.6 billion years ago. And it will probably continue shining for another five billion years, until its energy reserves run out.
Image: Reuters/Y. Behrakis
A big idol for energy researchers
The sun is basically a huge nuclear fusion reactor. At its core, pressure and temperature are so high that hydrogen atoms merge together to form helium atoms. This process releases huge amounts of energy. One thimble of sun material generates as much energy as burning thousand metric tons of coal does.
Image: rangizzz/Fotolia.com
100 times bigger than Earth
Seen from Earth, the sun doesn't seem big - it is just a bright spot in the sky. But it does have a radius of about 700,000 kilometres (435,000 miles). Its core is 15 million degree Celsius (27 million degree Fahrenheit). Temperatures on the sun's surface still reach 5500 degree Celsius (10,000 degree Fahrenheit).
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/F. Rumpenhorst
One in a billion
All stars in our universe glow because they generate energy deep down inside. Our sun is just like other billlions of stars scattered across the universe. In comparison with other stars, our sun is of medium size. Some stars are a hundred times bigger, others are just a tenth of the sun's size.
Image: Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty Images
Restless on the outside
The sun's surface is seething away. Hot and brightly glowing material ascends from the sun's inside, cools and sinks down again, appearing much darker. Our sun is the only star in the universe so close to Earth that astronomers can observe in such detail.
Image: Getty Images/Q. Rooney
Amazing sunspots
Sometimes big dark spots appear on the sun's surface staying for about a month. Even before the birth of Christ, humans already knew of those spots, and Galileo Galilei later recorded their appearance in writing. But for a long time people were mystified where those spots came from. Now we know the answer: they're areas with a particularly strong magnetic field.
Image: picture-alliance/ dpa
Dangerous storms
When the sun is very active, geomagnetic storms develop. It's when the sun catapults a particularly high number of charged particles into space. Those particles can hit and destroy satellites. They might also disturb electric power substations on Earth and even lead to power breakdowns.
Image: dapd
When the sky glows
This is another, much more beautiful effect of geomagnetic storms: an aurora, also called polar light. It occurs when charged particles of the sun hit the Earth's atmosphere. The frequency of how often we may enjoy this spectacle depends on the solar cycle. Every eleven years the sun is particularly active - that's when many geomagnetic storms and auroras can be observed.
Image: dapd
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Sources:
NASA: 2024 Total Solar Eclipse https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/future-eclipses/eclipse-2024
