How early do you start planning a party? A week before? Maybe a month, if you know it’s going to be a big one? After all, there’s only so much you can know beforehand. Well, some people have been planning for the party next week for seven years. It’s going to span several hundred miles, last for about three minutes, and everyone — and I mean everyone, is invited.
I’m talking, of course, about the 2024 solar eclipse, which will pass over parts of the United States from Texas to Vermont on April 8th, and is the last solar eclipse to cross the US until 2044.
Jason Wang: You know, since the last solar eclipse happened in 2017, people have been already thinking about 2023. So it’s been in the back of my head 2024 sorry it’s been in the back of my head for 7 years now.
That was Jason Wang, an assistant professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at Northwestern University, as well as with CIERA, the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics. He’s planning, along with many other students and professors, to travel to the eclipse — in fact, he canceled his class so that students could go.
JW: Are you, like, asking people to go Yeah, I’m, I’m trying to convince everyone to skip class to go see the Tolar solar eclipse.
Wang plans to meet up in Chicago with a few friends from graduate school, and then drive south to wherever the weather seems the least cloudy. Northwestern, which is roughly four hours by car from the path of totality, or the place where the eclipse will be total, is still the site of a lot of preparation for the big day. Places like
Jacob Wendler: Effingham, Illinois
Simon Hedin: Indianapolis
And other cities across the country will play host to science enthusiasts from all over.
Evelyn Driscoll and Jacob Wendler are both Medill juniors, and part of a group that’s been planning an eclipse excursion almost since they met.
Jacob Wendler: So fall of 2021 when I took astronomy 110, and for my natural sciences distro, and my professor was like, if there’s one thing you take out of the class, it’s that you have to go see the total solar eclipse in 2024. It’s going to be like the last total solar eclipse viewable from the contiguous United States for the last time.
Evelyn Driscoll: And we all were like, yeah, we’ll do it. We’re gonna make a plan. And so we all put on our calendars and 2024 that we were gonna go see the Eclipse.
JW: like at first it was kind of a bit and we didn’t really know if we’d still be friends, junior year, but here we are two and a half years later, and
ED: Now it’s happening. And we’re all still friends.And we made a plan to go to Effingham, Illinois,
JW: it’s this like tiny town in southern Illinois, but they have all this programming plan because tons of people are coming from the Chicago area and other urban areas.
ED: because it is on the toe to what is that the path of totality The Path of Totality, which means that we will get to see a total solar eclipse, not just a partial solar eclipse.
Medill junior Saul Pink has a similar plan, albeit a slightly different end destination.
Saul Pink: Well, you know, there’s two things that I really wish to do in my life which is see a total solar eclipse and go to a Waffle House, and lots of my friends share the same aspirations. So the closest Waffle House is in the suburbs of Indianapolis, which is in the path of the total eclipse. So the plan is to drive down, go get some waffles at the Waffle House, sit in the beautiful, majestic Waffle House parking lot and you watch the total eclipse.
The plan was hatched by McCormick junior Simon Hedin, who has had an interest in astronomy for years and first heard about the eclipse about a year ago. When he realized how close it was to Evanston, it was a no-brainer that he would try to witness it in person.
SH: Maybe it’s like a childish thing to go, you know, see where the sun is not shining. And see where the moon is blocking it out. But it’s something that I’ve always thought is kind of cool because like into astronomy and I’m into the stars at least, you don’t get to see many of those here and while the eclipse is happening, it’s about as good a star viewing as you’ll get.
According to Jason Wang, it’s also where astronomers have been able to study little-seen phenomena, like solar corona, and even help to prove Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
JW: During the eclipse, you can see very faint stars really close to the sun and you actually can measure the gravitational perturbation of the sun bending light predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. So there are, there are actually historically been uses for this, this solar eclipse but nowadays, I mean, it’s just cool.
Even though solar eclipses aren’t as in vogue as research subjects anymore, there’s still good reason to follow the crowd and head down to southern Illinois or Indiana, Wang said. He saw totality in the 2017 eclipse, and the experience made a profound impression.
JW: almost all the astronomers I know are going to go see it, you know, so like it’s, it’s like really the best total solar eclipses are by far the best astronomical event to view, in my opinion.
you see this, this glowing annulus around a black disk that’s the moon blocking out the sun. It’s a spectacular sight to behold.
At Northwestern, CIERA is planning viewing parties and other opportunities for education, but for those that are travelling, Wendler and Wang had some advice. The first, possibly no longer applicable tip? Plan ahead.
JWe: I had a huge spreadsheet, picked out like 30 Airbnbs along the path of totality, which ranges from like, I think Texas up through Arkansas, Southern Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, up to like upstate New York
The spreadsheet contained 58 Airbnb listings, in case anyone was interested. The second piece of advice was to prepare for traffic. Everyone worries about the way down, but the way back into the city is the real risk.
JWe: Yeah, on the way back we never be all of the trains and buses like greyhounds and trucks are all booked up.
JW: Our plan is to leave really early in the morning and drive wherever we needed to and get settled and, you know, bring supplies, you know, bring food, bring, bring water, you know, be prepared for a long drive back. So that, you know, if you need to be, if you’re stuck on the road, like you’re, you’re still ok.
Despite all of the preparation that goes into seeing this couple-times-in-a-lifetime experience, Wang assured me, and his class, who he hopes will make the effort, that it is more than worth it. Pictures — and audio — just don’t do it justice.
JW: A lot of times you see something in space and you go, like, see it in real time for real. You’re like, I guess that was pretty cool. Like meteor showers, right? You see all these, like, meteor showers, like, oh, look at these pictures and you, like, try to watch one in the night sky and you see like three maybe in an hour, like, and it’s like, really cold out and you’re like, I just wanna go back in. This, like, you see the picture, like, that’s pretty cool and then you go there and see it in person. You’re like, this blew my mind.
Of course, even if the day is cloudy, or the traffic is bad, you’re still hopefully with the people you’d want to be with even if there wasn’t a rare celestial event occurring a few hundred miles away.
SH: At the end of the day, you’re gonna be with people and you’re gonna be in a car.
JW: Fingers crossed, the skies are clear. That’s all I have to say.
For WNUR News, I’m Mika Ellison.
Music: Upstreet by Ketsa
