Solar Eclipse Paths: 2023 & 2024

This dataset shows the paths of the upcoming eclipses and the percentage of the sun in the eclipse that will occur. The paths are layers that can be turned on and off.

Solar eclipses are magnificent to see and happen somewhat regularly, though they rarely cross the same location. Focusing on total solar eclipses, there are roughly two in a three-year period on Earth, but the shadow of totality often is only about fifty miles wide. The average number of years between a place on Earth having two total solar eclipses is once in every four hundred years! That is just an average, however, and two can occur in the same place over a short period of time too.

Annular eclipses are not quite total, which means that there is a bit of the sun peeking out from the sides. Still, they are magnificent and should be celebrated!

If you are not inside the thin path, you’ll see on the dataset contour lines which indicate how much of the sun will be covered by the moon’s shadow in your location.

In 2023 and 2024, there are two that cross America. First, an annular eclipse on October 14, 2023 from Oregon through parts of Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Texas. Second, a total eclipse on April 8, 2024 that makes a big path across a populated chunk of the United States. Cities in totality include San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas, Texas; Indianapolis, Indiana; Dayton and Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester, New York; Burlington, Vermont; Montreal, Canada.

Shape files were pulled from NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio and formatted using ArcGIS Pro (for a free alternative use QGIS). Labels and legends were created using Adobe Photoshop.