Why You Should Travel for the Solar Eclipse

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The difference is literally night and day.

It's hard to qualify why you should travel for a total solar eclipse - especially if you have never been to one before.

As someone who spent a good third of adulthood abroad, traveled to six different continents and seen the most incredible and breathtaking sights this wonderful planet has to offer, it is single handedly one of the most titular and irreplicable experiences I have ever witnessed.

Here's what I tell people: If you have " seen it," and who you are and your body doesn't respond, then you saw a partial solar eclipse. Because if you've seen one, you know.

It is an event that embeds itself into your soul, a lot like, one eclipse chaser, has likened it to, and almost memorable as a first kiss. There's no denying the pure magnificence, and the humbling it brings.

(For those that remember their history classe, Christopher Columbus witnessed a total lunar eclipse, still a complete testament to power of the universe and cosmos, especially in this day and age, where there is rarely an event that stops time.)

In 2017, my best friend and I took off on a four-day drive expedition down to Cerulean, Kentucky to see the solar eclipse for a two-minute-and-a-half event. On that 40-hour plus drive, there was a lot of hours debating what the true definition of "crazy" was.

(We did justify that we could stop off on the way in D.C. to see our old friend Matt, Harold-and-Kumar style.)

It ended up being such a defining experience that I vowed for the next total solar eclipse, I would bring someone of importance in my life to it, whether that be my significant other, my future child, or my parents, for them to witness and for me to share.

It is that special, truly.

Can't you just Google images of the total solar eclipse?

No, the total solar eclipse does not look like anything you've ever seen before in life.

In fact, most photography tools and even the most highly sophisticated camera is completely ill-equipped to capture one. Basically, what is searchable on the Internet doesn't even begin to capture it.

Most people who have had the privilege of viewing a total solar eclipse can tell the photographs capture about only 10% of the visual experience.

For everyone who tells you not to attempt to take a picture, they're absolutely right.

In fact, my best friend, my Kumar-a Harvard-responsible consultant type who was responsible for filming it on camera-was so stunned, he dropped the phone. (This we only found this out after we reviewed the footage and we saw the phone hitting the ground!)

In this Vox piece, Glenn Schneider, an eclipse chaser describes the experience:

I was literally transfixed, I couldn't move. I couldn't operate my cameras. I didn't even think about the telescope. My binoculars hung around my neck and I just stood there staring up at the hole in the sky.... When it was over, I just stood there unable to move until somebody finally shook me back into reality.

The reality of experiencing a total solar eclipse

In the most inaccurate recollection of someone who has nothing more than the power of human recollection, it is an experience unlike any other.

The sun goes black, as it is being blocked by the moon, illuminating the corona. Though many accurately describe the sun turning into a diamond ring, what most people fail to describe the aliveness of the event.

The sun is beating, and pulsating, with the corona beating around it, playing with the celestial body; and for the entirety of the full duration, the sun is beating like a human heart.

For a few minutes, the temperature drops a few degrees, and the sky turns into something reminiscent of dusk, though it is not not, and it is all around you. It's twilight in every direction, not just one direction, and the world, and all of its inhabitants, human, animal, or insect, responds accordingly.

It is the cosmos at its most naked, everything at the core stripped bare. It's a primal experience, being pure and alive, sharing the experience, with everyone else there in their most pure form.

Even in both ancient and modern astrology (astronomy's more woo-woo cousin), the eclipses play a particularly important role, illuminating what would have been hidden and a moment of no return.  It is a moment of perfect-and total-clarity.

Even for all of that allegory, with all that language, that is the most accurate description of what I can say it is like to experience a total solar eclipse.

This Vox video covering the 2017 total solar eclipse sums up the magic, with other eclipse chasers echoing similar experiences.

The path of totality for the 2024 solar eclipse

The best part of the this upcoming solar eclipse is the pure democratization of it, especially for those situated along the eastern U.S. This eclipse starts from the western part of Mexico and then travels upward, and toward the east crossing just under the center of the U.S., before crossing through the Northeast.

Below is a map of the path of totality for 2024's total solar eclipse. The data is imported directly from NASA's coordinates.

The purple outlines the path of the umbra, or essentially, the path of totality, while the teal line denotes the center line (like, if you want a few extra seconds of totality or something like that). 

The lucky states include Texas, and traveling through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, and then some. Small parts of Tennessee and Michigan will also experience the total solar eclipse.

Every area that experiences totality will also experience a partial eclipse before and after these times. Here is a quick table from NASA.

My best friend and I looked at each other afterwards.

Our words to each other, as we passed glances, before we got back into the car, for the longest seven-hour traffic jam exit out of a two-lane country road ever, knowing we were facing an additional 50 plus hours on the road: "Worth it."