LibGuides: Solar Eclipses: Home

Solar Eclipses Across America

Two major solar eclipses are coming to North America! On Saturday, October 14, 2023, an annular ("ring of fire") eclipse sweeps from Oregon to Texas in a 125-mile-wide path that continues to the Yucatán peninsula and northern South America. Six months later, on Monday, April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse darkens a 115-mile-wide swath from Mexico to the Canadian maritimes, traversing the U.S. from Texas to Maine in the process. In both cases all of North America will have at least a partial solar eclipse.

What is a Solar Eclipse?

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between Earth and the sun, and the moon casts a shadow over Earth.

There are four types of solar eclipses:

Total solar eclipses
Partial solar eclipses
Annular solar eclipses
Hybrid solar eclipses

Federal Agency Resources

The 'All American' Eclipse: A Guide for Libraries and their Communities
This 24-page guide was developed for libraries by STAR_Net and the NASA@My Library project. It also includes information on companies that sell certified eclipse glasses.
Eclipse History
Historical Eclipses
National Park Service
This website provides some basic information about the eclipse and provides a link to a page with information about the 21 National Parks in the path of totality.
National Weather Service
U.S. Naval Observatory

Solar Eclipse 101

Find it in the Catalog

American Eclipse by David Baron
ISBN: 9781631490163
On a scorching July afternoon in 1878, at the dawn of the Gilded Age, the moon's shadow descended on the American West, darkening skies from Montana Territory to Texas. This rare celestial event--a total solar eclipse--offered a priceless opportunity to solve some of the solar system's most enduring riddles, and it prompted a clutch of enterprising scientists to brave the wild frontier in a grueling race to the Rocky Mountains. Acclaimed science journalist David Baron, long fascinated by eclipses, re-creates this epic tale of ambition, failure, and glory in a narrative that reveals as much about the historical trajectory of a striving young nation as it does about those scant three minutes when the blue sky blackened and stars appeared in mid-afternoon.
Eclipse by Frank Close
ISBN: 9780198795490
Eclipse - Journeys to the Dark Side of the Moon, written by the widely read popular science author Frank Close, describes the spellbinding allure of this most beautiful natural phenomenon. The book explains why eclipses happen, reveals their role in history, literature and myth, and focuses on eclipse chasers, who travel with ecstatic fervour to some of the most inaccessible places on the globe to be present at the moment of totality.
Mask of the Sun by John Dvorak
ISBN: 9781681773308
Publication Date: 2017-03-07
Eclipses have stunned, frightened, emboldened and mesmerized people for thousands of years. They have been thought of as harbingers of evil as well as a sign of the divine. An amazing phenomena unique to Earth, they have provided the key to much of what we now know and understand about the sun, our moon, gravity, and the workings of the universe. Dvorak provides explanations as to how and why eclipses occur-- as well as insight into the forthcoming eclipse of 2017 that will be visible across North America.
Sun Moon Earth by Tyler Nordgren
ISBN: 9780465060924
With beautiful illustrations and a detailed map, Sun Moon Earth has everything you need to get ready for the next solar eclipse. On April 8, 2024, millions of Americans will experience an awe-inspiring phenomenon: a total eclipse of the sun. In Sun Moon Earth, astronomer Tyler Nordgren illustrates how this most seemingly unnatural of natural phenomena was transformed from a fearsome omen to a tourist attraction

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