My old bud Dan Durda tipped me off to this very cool image from the Earth Science Picture of the Day site:
It shows the location of all the total solar eclipses over the past two millennia! That’s petty nifty. As you can see, some places got more than others (where the trails are brighter white). Chicago seems to have been blessed, as has central southern Canada. It’s interesting; there is very roughly one solar eclipse per year. The shadow of the Moon on the ground is relatively narrow, so even after so many eclipses the Earth isn’t completely covered.
You may notice there are more eclipses in the north than the south. According to ESPOD, that’s because there have been more eclipses during the (northern) summer months. During that time, the Earth is farther from the Sun, making the Sun appear smaller, so it’s easier for the Moon to cover it up. Since that’s northern summer, days are longer too so there is a higher chance of actually seeing an eclipse in the northern hemisphere (something ESPOD forgot to mention 
).
The next total solar eclipse will be on August 1, 2008. But you’d better dress warmly: the track is way up north, crossing Canada, Greenland, and Asia.
November 9th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Awesome! It’s a candidate to be my very first solar eclipse.
November 9th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
To Canada! >_>
I’ve never seen a solar eclipse. If I could somehow lose myself and end up in Canada around August 1, 2008… I shall definitely go see. Perhaps if I am lucky, I’ll at least get to see a partial eclipse.
I have watched a couple of lunar eclipses over the years. But still. It’s not a solar eclipse.
I should really get back to editing my research paper before I lose myself in the tubes.
November 9th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Will we get at least a partial eclipse in Edmonton? How far north are we talkin’? We had a near total eclipse when I was in Elementary, and were told no matter what… don’t look at the sun when out for recess. Of course those are dare words to elementary students and everyone was out there burning out their retinas. (I was living in Southern Alberta at the time, and it was 1984 give or take a year)
We also had a partial eclipse in Southern Alberta when I was in grade 9, and I made a viewer using a shoebox and with a pin hole in one end. It was very cool.
November 9th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Never mind… I looked at the map, and it looks like Edmonton will be out of luck.
November 9th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Sucks to be in the southernmost tip of Brazil, it seems. (Relatively) no eclipse action there.
November 9th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
I do know they suggest viewing solar eclipses through a welder’s glass. (The kind of glass used in welders’ visors so the can see what they are doing while they work.) That way, you can view the solar eclipse directly without risking eye damage.
Darth Curt’s shoebox viewer is another alternative.
November 9th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
I wonder where I can get a pair of cobalt glasses (a la 1950s nuclear bomb testing)…
November 9th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
One of the best places to see the next eclipse is near Novosibirsk, in Siberia. That city is directly on the rail line known as the Trans Siberian Express. But don’t dress warmly! That part of Siberia can actually be quite hot in midsummer. Nearby are the wild Altai Mountains, and even the mystical kingdom of Tuva (sought by Richard Feynman just before his death).
November 9th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Novosibirsk, in Siberia? Sounds like a great place to vacation in August. ( Or maybe I’ll just try Canada.)
November 9th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Great picture! It became my background before I finished reading your blog entry.
I’m in (and from) Chicago, and I’ve seen a few solar eclipses, but have no memory of any being total eclipses. 
The last eclipse I saw, we used the “pinhole in paper” technique, which was pretty cool.
November 9th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Hmmm, this is a tempting image with which to find patterns whether they’re there or not.
How much does local momentary tidal force vary, measured along the same lines where Moon and Sun are lined up, compared to nearby? Enough to make a differential tug?
The brighter lines on this picture remind me of the longterm earthquake fault records or the geomagnetic anomaly maps that show things like spreading zones and rifting zones.
http://www.geomag.us/models/wdmam.html
The bright spot just west of the Galapagos stands out as well. Got a seamount there or anything else on the map?
November 9th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
[...] Bad Astronomy Blog » 2000 years of solar eclipses [...]
November 9th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Chicago isn’t blessed, it’s more like St. Louis. We missed by 30 miles or so the 1994 annular eclipse. I suspect even if we were in one of those nodes it would be cloudy most of the time for the eclipse. I know historically the Yerkes Observatory astronomers (aka the University of Chicago’s astronomy and astrophysics department) always traveled a lot when eclipses were scientifically very valuable.
November 9th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Loaf of Bread wrote: “I do know they suggest viewing solar eclipses through a welder’s glass. (The kind of glass used in welders’ visors so the can see what they are doing while they work.) That way, you can view the solar eclipse directly without risking eye damage.”
Be very careful here. Some welder’s glass types are OK, others are not. You need to check, but my recollection of what I was told is that the old gas welding type is OK but more modern glass intended for electric welding is not.
Similarly, I hear that old type exposed and developed black and white film was OK but modern B&W films which use the C41 process (I think it is, i.e., that are processed like colour film) also let too much infra-red through.
November 9th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Ed Davies says: “Some welder’s glass types are OK, others are not. You need to check, but my recollection of what I was told is that the old gas welding type is OK but more modern glass intended for electric welding is not.”
Actually you got it backwards. The arc welding glass is orders of magnitude darker than gas welding glass. The filters are numbered in a simple manner (to avoid confusion) such as #1, #2, etc. up through (I think) #15. They are actually the attenuation exponents (i.e. a #8 filter only lets 10^-8 as much light energy through), but I’m not sure about the spectrum they cover. Obviously they are very effective in the UV, which is what you want. To view an eclipse, or even just the sun directly (sunspots are sometimes visible to the naked eye!) you want at least a #12 filter, but a #14 is better.
The numbers add linearly so that a #10 and a #4 stacked together are the equivalent of a #14. In fact, a really fun thing to do is hold two filters with a gap between them. You’ll get an infinitely regressing set of solar images, and with something as bright as the sun it will regress a long way!
- Jack
November 9th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Ed Davies says: “Similarly, I hear that old type exposed and developed black and white film was OK but modern B&W films which use the C41 process (I think it is, i.e., that are processed like colour film) also let too much infra-red through.”
Oops, I forgot to comment on that part. It’s the silver in the film that do the filtering. Films using the C41, or most other color processes, chemically remove the silver leaving just the dyes behind.
When I viewed the total eclipse in southern Washington in 1979, I used a 4″ x 5″ piece of Plus-X sheet film as a filter over my Celestron C-90 that I was using for photographs. It worked OK for picture taking, but it’s not an optical device. It produced more like a shadow picture.
- Jack
PS – In my previous post when I said sunspots are sometimes visible to the naked eye, I, of course, meant the naked eye protected by welders glass!
November 10th, 2007 at 10:51 am
A few years ago, I traveled a couple hundred kms north to see a total solar eclipse (I am living in South Africa). The roads near Kruger National park were lined with cars of the like minded.
It turned out that there was cloud cover, but it was still AWESOME!!
The birds even ceased chirping for the few minutes of “night”.
Interestingly, you could purchase paper sunglasses to view the eclipse (sort of like 3D glasses but different lenses obviously), but it was widely publicized that you could also view the sun through the foil that is used to package a certain local tea brand. I never checked to see if that was proven safe, but it was definitely publicized.
November 10th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
24 October 1995 I flew from KL to Kudat on the eastern tip of Borneo to join 2000 other like minded eclipse chasers in a wide spot in the road for 2 and a half minutes of totality. It was worth every cent. The overworked word awsome is uniquely appropriate. Due to the high level of moisture in the air (I’m guessing) the wave of darkening on the ground careening toward us was matched by a deep purplish circle in the air which settled on us at totality. Wow! All around the horizon was left in sunlight. There is no comparison with a ‘partial’. At lease once in your life get on the “track” you will never forget it. A half hour later the clouds closed in and we would have seen nothing. Timing is everything.
November 11th, 2007 at 6:36 am
There is a very nice Google Earth overlay that shows all solar eclipses since 1001 (http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=150515, 4.7 MB), this allows for some very nice interactive exploring (the question “which century had the most total eclipses in my area” can easily be answered).
Google Earth Blog has more information about this:
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/01/solar_eclipse_p.html
Cheers
November 12th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
[...] 2000 years of solar eclipses This map shows spots of eclipse feast and eclipse famine. [...]
November 13th, 2007 at 7:31 am
I guess we’re blessed with solar eclipses to compensate for the Cubs.
I remember watching a couple when I was a kid using the shoebox-pinhole viewer. I’ve also stood under a tree with a piece of paper, the leaves acting as a pinhole work pretty well, too.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:10 am
Same image with more detail :
http://www.lpod.org/?p=1090