On April 8, 2024, there will be a rare event take place in the skies over Mexico, thirteen States in the USA, and a small portion of southeast Canada. That rare event is a total solar eclipse. of the sun. What makes this event so special and rare is that it is not just a solar eclipse, but a total eclipse. The moon is much smaller than the sun, so for a total eclipse to occur the moon must pass through its closest orbit to the sun. A total solar eclipse means that the moon will totally block out the sun producing a nighttime effect in daylight hours. This will not happen again in more than 20 years.
Only a very limited area of the USA will experience this total eclipse. NASA has plotted a pathway of the total eclipse and that pathway passes through portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. The pathway of the total eclipse will be 115 miles wide. Indianapolis and Bloomington, Indiana are considered the ultimate cities in which to watch the eclipse. The reason is that the totality of the eclipse will last longer in these cities than any other cities in the pathway. In these Indiana cities and surrounding areas, the totality will last slightly over 4 minutes. There are 31.6 million people who live in the total eclipse pathway and, including travelers, it is estimated that over 50 million people will watch the eclipse in the pathway of totality. Millions of people will travel from all over the USA to the pathway to view this rare event making it what many are calling the most watched event in USA history. Many major US cities are within several hundred miles of the pathway including Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Cincinnati, Chicago, St Louis, Nashville, Memphis, and Houston to name a few. Half of the USA population lives within 250 miles of the pathway of the total eclipse.
Check out more information here: