A Fine Day for an Eclipse It's Never Too Early to Start Planning for One

On 21 August 2017, the United States will experience one of the most amazing phenomena imaginable. A total eclipse of the sun will occur, and essentially everyone in the contiguous 48 states will experience it to some extent. What?s more, the so-called »path of totality» will stretch from coast to coast-Oregon to South Carolina (Figure 1). It's likely that more people will experience this solar eclipse than any in history. The approximately 12 million people who live within the 70-mi-wide path of totality, plus the thousands more who'll travel sometimes very long distances, will see a once-in-a-lifetime event: the disk of the moon completely and exactly blocking the disk of the sun. Assuming they have clear skies, of course! © 2003-2012 IEEE.