Surely you have heard by now that a solar eclipse is coming. As the April 8 date approaches, the media/social media coverage will likely rise to a roar. I think we all know that the experience of being in the path of a total solar eclipse is eerie and memorable – – birds and insects can fall silent as night-like darkness falls, and a noticeable chill may be felt in the air.

Maps abound of the eclipse path across North America. For the U.S.,  it starts in Texas around 1:30 Central time, traverses southern Indiana and northern Ohio around 3:10 Eastern and ends in northern Maine about 3:30. Here is a snip I took from this NASA map, where I zoomed in the Midwest/Northeast section, and traced in red the lines of 90% totality:

If you really want the 100% experience, and if you want it to last the full four minutes, you must be in a relatively narrow strip. And if you want to have good chance of not having clouds obscure the fun, you may need to fly to central Texas. Buffalo, New York is in the middle of the eclipse path, but it is a notoriously overcast place.

But lots of folks, including residents of Chicago, Toronto, and the Boston-Washington corridor, live within the zone of (nearly) 90% totality, where you can see the moon sliding across most of the sun’s disk over the course of a few minutes, and experience significant darkening. The next solar eclipse to touch the U.S. will not be until 2044, and that will be barely visible from three less-populated states, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

So, I suggest you take the opportunity to enjoy this one to the max. This absolutely entails using special glasses with filters designed for safe viewing of the sun. Do not even think of looking at the sun without such glasses, and be alert lest children pick up the wrong cues and try to look at the sun.

The good news is that eclipse glasses are still available. I ordered some from Amazon a couple days ago that arrived two days later, and I saw them for sale in Lowe’s today. I got some extra to share with random friends and strangers. This can be a great chance to interact with neighbors and children.

The price per pair of glasses varies a lot, so do comparison shop.  I look for ones that say “CE and ISO Certified” like these. Be safe and have fun!