Total solar eclipse 2024

Click here for more spectacular photos from today's eclipse.

Americans are a little spoiled when it comes to eclipses. After all, we just experienced one that the majority of the country got to see, and it comes on the heels of the "Great American Eclipse" that tracked from Oregon to South Carolina in 2017.

But that doesn't often happen. And it won't again until the 2040s.

On average, an eclipse occurs in the same place every 375 years, said Dr. John Mulchaey, Carnegie Institution for Science’s deputy for science and the director and Crawford H. Greenewalt Chair of the Carnegie Observatories.

And we’re living at the right time to truly enjoy the sight of a total eclipse on Earth, he said.

While eclipses occur throughout the solar system, none are exactly like the ones experienced in our world.

The moon is about 400 times smaller than the sun, but the moon is also about 400 times closer to Earth than the sun is, creating a “beautiful coincidence” that results in eclipses when the three celestial bodies align, Mulchaey said.

This alignment is called syzygy, or when three objects line up in space.

In the distant past, the moon was much closer to Earth, which means totality likely didn’t appear as it does now. And within another 60 million years or so, the moon will be so far away that it will never cover the sun, making this a rare moment in time, Mulchaey said.

Eclipses have long inspired terror and awe as ancient cultures sought ways to explain the celestial phenomenon.

“I find the mythology and folklore of eclipses fascinating,” said Mark Littman, a journalism professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and coauthor of “Totality: The Great North American Eclipse of 2024.”

Ancient records of eclipses date back to 772 BC, when the Chinese marked them on animal bones, and 750 BC, when Babylonians recorded eclipses in their cuneiform writing on clay tablets, Littmann said. Both cultures "realized there was a rhythm to eclipses," which meant they could be calculated and predicted in the future.

Despite the ability to predict eclipses, the cause of the eclipse remained unknown, so myths and folklore filled the knowledge gap.

"The mythology of eclipses most often involves a beast that tries to eat the sun for lunch. For the Chinese, that beast was a dragon or a dog. For Scandinavians, it was a wolf," Littmann said.

Those in northern South America thought the sun and moon fought one another, trying to shut off each other's light, he said.

Transylvanian folklore suggested that the sun looked down on Earth, saw the corruption of humans, and turned away in disgust.

And the Fon people of western Africa thought the male sun ruled the day, while the female moon ruled the night.

"They love each other, but they are so busy traversing the sky and providing light that they seldom get together," Littmann said. "Yet when they do, they modestly turn off the light."

NASA scientists took full advantage of Monday’s eclipse to collect data and study the Earth, moon and sun in different ways, the agency’s deputy administrator said. One area of specific interest is the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere.

“This is a very elusive region and it can be viewed during a solar eclipse in a very special way,” Pam Melroy said during a news conference at the end of March.

She said understanding the corona is “key to understanding fundamental questions about how heat and energy are transferred out into the solar wind,” which contributes to how solar wind and flares impacts Earth.

And this is an especially good year to study the corona, she said. The sun is approaching solar maximum — the peak of activity — later this year, and scientists are eager to capture this moment through a variety of observations that can only occur during eclipses. During solar maximum, the sun’s magnetic poles flip and then the sun will grow quiet again during a solar minimum.

“The chance that we are going to see something amazing is very high,” Melroy said.

A former NASA astronaut said she hopes Monday’s total solar eclipse inspires a connection between everyone who witnessed it and the universe.

While viewing totality in Bloomington, Indiana, the former astronaut said she was thinking about other times she experienced eclipses. 

When she saw a partial eclipse as a child in Chicago, Jemison said she was trying to make sense of what was happening.

But then thinking about her time as an astronaut, “it reinforced the feeling that when I look up, when I look away from the Earth when I was in space, it again connects me with this world, with this universe – and know that I have a responsibility.”

Jemison said science is about building on knowledge for the next generation, and the eclipse was an opportunity to do just that. Scientists used Monday’s eclipse to gather data to better understand the sun but Jemison said she hopes there is also learning at a personal level.

“I hope what people discover is themselves and their connectedness to the rest of the universe,” she said.

Yes! There is an area where both 2017 and 2024 paths of totality intersect. According to a map from NASA, that area includes parts of Missouri, southern Illinois and western Kentucky.

One of the places in that intersection, Carbondale, Illinois, experienced the longest period of totality in 2017 at 2 minutes, 42 seconds, according to NASA. 

Juan M. Soto Peña and his wife experienced the joy of a total solar eclipse alongside their daughter, Luciana, in Tucson, Arizona.

The couple saw a partial solar eclipse together on December 25, 2000, in the state of Sonora in Mexico, he said.

Maybe your eclipse glasses were fake. Perhaps you forgot to slip them back on as the first bit of sunlight reappeared after totality. Or you noticed your child, friend or family member looking up at the sun without putting on their glasses.

Symptoms of eye damage after improperly viewing the eclipse without proper protection can take hours or days to manifest. They include loss of central vision, altered color vision or distorted vision.

And if you notice any symptoms or experience eye discomfort, make an appointment immediately using the American Optometric Association's doctor locator, said Ronald Benner, an optometrist and president of the American Optometric Association.

If the damage occurs in the center of someone’s vision, it can affect the ability to read or recognize faces, Benner said.

From space, crew members at the International Space Station saw a different perspective of the celestial event — the moon’s shadow cast onto Earth.

The orbiting laboratory "soared into the moon’s shadow" and NASA Flight Engineers Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps got a chance to capture it following their “workday filled with cargo transfers, spacesuit maintenance, and microgravity research,” according to a statement from NASA. The astronauts took pictures and videos of the shadow of the moon as seen from their position about 260 miles above southeastern Canada.