Yes, you should go see a total solar eclipse
and when/where to see it
Short updates:
After St. Louis and the solar eclipse (the topic of this post) and southern California, we’re done traveling for a while. I may go to the US Go Congress in Portland, Oregon, with my son, but otherwise we’ll enjoy summer in Chicago.
Les Nomades is an old school French restaurant in Streeterville. Old school as in, men have to wear jackets throughout the meal. But the food is worth it. Its long-time chef Roland Liccioni retired recently, and here’s a remarkable report from the kitchen on his last day.
It appears that Ramen Takeya has closed and is being replaced by a Korean pub called Palilgu, by the same owners. I’ll miss Takeya, which I included in my top 5 ramen shops in the city (and the best near the Loop). At the same time, I expect the new restaurant to be very good, given the owners’ track record.
We went and saw the total solar eclipse earlier this month.
As I mentioned here, I saw the 2017 eclipse in Carbondale, Illinois, with my parents. There were good reasons to go to Carbondale. It seemed cool that Carbondale was in the middle of the small region where you could see both the 2017 and 2024 total eclipses. It was also on the way from Memphis (where my parents live) to Chicago (where I had just moved to). After the eclipse, my parents drove home, and I took the Amtrak to Chicago.
We went to southern Illinois again this time, partly because seeing it at the same place still seemed cool, but more importantly because that was still the natural place where the Chicago and Memphis parts of my family could watch together.
Why you should see it
At least one friend thought I wanted to see the eclipse because I’m a physicist. I don’t think this is true. My Ph.D. advisor did do some work on solar neutrinos, but I never worked on it, and eclipses aren’t relevant for that research as far as I know—the Moon is virtually transparent for neutrinos. I guess I’m more aware than most people of how an eclipse occurs and how the size of the Sun and the Moon as seen from the earth are very close, making total solar eclipses rare. But even some grade school kids know this. (Right?)
Really, I wanted to see it because I knew from watching the one in 2017 that a total eclipse is an entirely different experience from a partial eclipse. If you think a 95% partial eclipse is like 95% of a total eclipse, it’s really really not.
I don’t know if words can do justice to this, but one illustration of this is the experience of my 2-year old son.
As we set up by a lake in Murphysboro, Illinois1, with the partial eclipse progressing, it was clear to him that there was something happening. People were looking up at the sky with floppy sunglasses. There were mysterious tubes pointed up at the sky. But he was more interested in bending eclipse glasses than in looking through them.
As totality approached, night lights at the park started turning on, so it was getting very dark, and noticeably cooler—and that’s true for people just outside the path of totality—but you can’t really see the eclipse with your naked eye as long as there’s direct sunlight coming through.
Once we were in a total eclipse, though, he could simply look up and see a ring where the Sun was. He started saying “Moon”, which could mean he understood that the Moon was hiding the Sun, or, more likely, he thought he was looking at the Moon whose light was somehow ring-like today.
I remember seeing a partial eclipse through a film as a child with my mom in Tokyo. It was neat. So neat that I still remember 36 or 37 years later. But it feels more intellectual, much less direct and visceral than a total eclipse.
A lot of people, including my wife, clapped right after we reached totality. It’s really funny in a way—people clapping for the Sun and the Moon, which don’t care about us, or care about anything at all2. But I get it. The experience seemed to demand the clapping.
Future eclipses
As you may know, this is a bad time to tell Americans to go see a total solar eclipse. There won’t be any total eclipses visible from the mainland US until 2044. There is a good one in 2045, with an eclipse path crossing the US from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Very few people are planning 21 years in advance for it.
Here’s the list of solar eclipses in the 21st century, and I’m focusing on ones categorized as total eclipses, in addition to a “hybrid” eclipse, which is where both a total and an annular (i.e. direct sunlight in a ring around the Moon) eclipses can be seen. I’ll stop at 2035, for a reason that’ll become clear.
Two more point before I start:
Unless you’re rich or have friends and family who would let you stay, you should try to stay in a big city because that’s where there’s more lodging options to handle the flood of visitors.
Especially if you’re traveling far, you want to make it a trip that just happens to include eclipse watching. Weather might not cooperate, as we saw this time.
These are big reasons why we stayed in St. Louis for the weekend before the eclipse this time3.
2026-08-12
Here’s a map of the eclipse path. This could be a decent one to travel for.
You can see totality in Greenland, Iceland, and Spain, and Reykjavik, Bilbao, and Valencia (among other Spanish cities) are inside the path of totality, and Madrid and Barcelona are just off. Any of these cities would probably be a good place as your base, although, note that Reykjavik is a very small city by Spanish standards4.
2027-08-02
Another potentially nice one to travel for.
This goes through southern Spain and North Africa then the Arabian Peninsula. Unlike the one above that goes through a big chunk of Spain, this one only gets Cádiz and Málaga in Spain, and of course the weird but strategically important British territory of Gibraltar.
Then there’s a long list of Middle East/North Africa cities that may or may not be good for tourists.
Tangier, Morroco—IMO the best of the bunch
Oran, Algeria—the setting for Albert Camus’s The Plague. Algiers is also just off the path of totality.
Sfax, Tunisia—2nd largest city in Tunisia, apparently
Benghazi, Libya—probably not the safest
Asyut and Luxor, Egypt—Luxor should be nice for ancient Egypt sites
Jeddah and Mecca, Saudi Arabia—Jeddah is the largest city in this path of totality. Mecca, I can’t get into as a non-Muslim.
Sana'a, Yemen—see Benghazi
2028-07-22
This goes through a big empty space in northern Australia, through Sydney, then into the sparsely populated South Island of New Zealand. I would say go to Sydney for this one.
2030-11-25
This goes through the capital of Namibia, Windhoek, but it’s a relatively small city. Durban, South Africa is the better bet in Africa.
Path of totality goes across the Indian Ocean to Australia. Adelaide and Brisbane are probably within day-trip range, but with the traffic on the day, I’m not so sure.
2031-11-14
This is the aforementioned hybrid solar eclipse. For a hybrid eclipse, the Moon is just close enough us to cover the Sun fully, so the path of totality is very thin. You’d have to be on the Pacific Ocean or in a rural part of Panama.
Possibly the most interesting eclipse here, but also one of the toughest to see.
2033-03-30
This is actually the next total solar eclipse in the United States. It goes through the northwestern part of Alaska and the edge of Siberia, where there aren’t really cities. This is probably the hardest eclipse to see in person here.
2034-03-20
Finally an eclipse through a megacity. This one goes through Lagos, Nigeria, whose metropolitan area contains around 20 million people. Of all the places in the world that I really would like to see, Lagos could be the biggest adventure.
Other than that, the path goes through Chad’s capital N’Djamena5, near Medina, Saudi Arabia (not as strict as Mecca), near Kuwait City, through Shiraz, Iran, through Peshawar and Islamabad, Pakistan, through Srinagar in the Indian-administered Kashmir, and into Tibet.
Much like the 2027 eclipse, there’s some geopolitical hotspots on that list.
2035-09-02
This eclipse gets to not just one, but two megacities. It goes right through Beijing, and just north of Tokyo proper. Basically all of the northern suburbs of Tokyo are covered. I’d say stay in Tokyo and take the train to a good viewing spot.
Totality also visits Pyongyang, North Korea. I don’t expect to be able to visit safely any time soon.
Recap
To my mind, there’s 3 relatively easy ones to see in the next 4 years, then there isn’t another easy one until 2035. If you do want to see a total eclipse, you may want to plan for one of the earlier ones here.
What I’m listening to now
Panamanian/Chicagoan Drummer/DJ Daniel Villarreal showed up in my “Best Chicago albums of 2023” post. Here he is with another Chicago musician V.V. Lightbody for a multilingual indie pop album.
There’s Latin feel to the tracks, and the vibe is pretty similar to Y La Bamba (I talked about them here). If I were to highlight one track, the samba beat in “Row Row Row” is a distinctive touch.
About 10 miles from Carbondale.
People clap for movies in theaters, too, but that seems a lot more like clapping for performers on stage than clapping for the solar eclipse.
Other big reasons: I (and my sister, who watched the eclipse in Texas) went to college in St. Louis and we have friends there.
The cultural reach of Icelanders is remarkable given there’s less than half a million of them.