The April 8 2024 eclipse has come and gone. It crossed the nation moving along a northeast path from Texas to Maine, touching 13 states including several major population centers like Dallas, Texas, Indianapolis, Ind., and Cleveland, Ohio. Even cities as far away as Seattle, Wash., got to see the moon partially covering the sun.
People gathered to catch the celestial spectacle, with the next such event not expected in the U.S. for another 20 years (2044 and 2045, to be exact). Some areas got lucky, like San Antinio, Texas, enjoying both this eclipse as well as the 2023 eclipse, which took a southeast path from Oregon to Texas.
NASA was center stage during the total eclipse. Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) were widely advertised as vehicles to understand eclipses, why they occur and the unique sizes and positions of the sun and the moon. If the size of the sun or moon, or their distances from the Earth were different, the phenomenon would be nonexistent, or less dramatic.
It is an accident of nature that the size of the moon serendipitously matches the size of the sun in the earth’s sky, making for the potential of........