Total Solar Eclipse, 8th April 2024

As mentioned in connection with the 2017 total eclipse, I have been observing eclipses for long enough that I am now seeing the next one in the same Saros Series as those I have seen before. Eclipses making up a Saros Series are separated by 18 years 11 days and 8 hours, and all have a very similarly-shaped ground track, though shifted west by 120degrees each time because of the extra 8 hours. For a (very detailed!) explanation of why such Series exist, I would refer you to my treatise on the subject which can be found in the Theory section of my website - click here and then on "Saros Series" in the centre near the top. While the eclipse in 2017 was the next one in Series 145 after the "Cornish Eclipse" of 1999, this one is the next in Series 139 after that in Libya in 2006. Series 139 is particularly notable as it contains the longest eclipse in the span of 12,000 years from 4000BCE to 8000CE - 7mins 29sec on 16th July 2186. This is only 3 seconds shorter than the longest total solar eclipse theoretically possible.

As this eclipse was, like that in 2017, in the USA I again assumed there would be a great demand for flights, and hotels in the best viewing spots, so once more early booking was essential. I thus made initial enquiries over 2 years in advance! The point of maximum duration of totality - 4mins 28sec - is near Torréon in Mexico, shown by the purple marker on the map above, as is the area likely to have the least cloud cover. However, this lies in a mountainous region and is therefore impractical for an eclipse trip. Eclipse duration and likelihood of clear skies then both decrease as one moves north-east and so it seemed that somewhere in Texas would offer the best viewing, both in terms of duration and likely cloud cover.

There were again several UK tour companies offering packages but, also again, only a few were offering the short-duration trip I was looking for. In the end I decided to go with Omega Breaks, as they also included a visit to the Houston Space Center and had Pete Lawrence from 'The Sky at Night' on board as "resident expert". In fact, when everyone assembled for a pre-eclipse talk by Pete I discovered that Paul Abel (a Section Director of the British Astronomical Association) and John Culshaw (impressionist and keen amateur astronomer) were also with us! A veritable embarassment of riches. The trip started in Houston, with the visit to the Space Center, and we then transferred north to Waxahachie, a town just to the south of Dallas whose name is outlined in red on the location map, to view the eclipse before flying home from Dallas. As the Space Center visit was a major part of the trip for me I produced a "mini-site" documenting this visit. To see what we got up to on this trip, click click here. The mini-site will open in a new window - to return to this page, close the new window. More importantly though - what did we see on eclipse day?? Click here to find out!