Eclipses might be a dime-a-dozen, but Halley's Comet doesn't mess around. My grandad saw it twice. I hope to, too. It comes once every 75 years. The last time was 1986. The next is 2061. If you were born today, you'd have to live to be 112 years-old to see it a second time.
Maybe a location thing. The current eclipse passes through NY today, the next one touching NY won’t be until 2079. Texas 2045. So it’s all over the place time-wise between eclipses and location.
But the darkest shadow called the umbra only falls in a very tiny place, slightly bigger than a few Districts and that shadow moves in a line and those places experience total solar eclipse.
So next year there may be another solar eclipse but New York will not experience a total solar eclipse for a long time.
Also two-thirds of the earth is water so most of the time the umbra falls on the sea.
Got lucky here as the clouds melted away enabling a good look from about 30% onward. Reinforced for me the fact that even though we are not even a microscopic part of the cosmic whole this event, also not a microscopic part of the infinity of the universe, is still a very moving and impressive thing
Even with cloud cover, seeing it at home was something special. I know what it's supposed to look and sound like at that hour. It wasn't the same as night - I could still see sunlight on the horizon all around me. I could sense that the wildlife was confused by it - all the birds just flew to the tops of the trees and were trying to make sense of what was happening. The bugs went quiet, and we were all whispering for no apparent reason - it just felt appropriate. The slow descent into darkness was unsettling, especially under cloud cover - it felt like we were under the gaze of a passing giant we could not see. I was surprised by how relieved I felt when the light started to return. It wasn't what I was expecting but the strangeness of it didn't disappoint, and I don't think seeing it away from home would have been quite the same.
It's hard to say because all of the figures come from different places, and the news articles always like to say the longer figures to gather more attention.
ex: There won't be another eclipse over Ohio for ___ years vs There won't be another eclipse over the continental U.S. for ___ years vs There won't be another eclipse anywhere in the world for ___ years
There was a great episode of NOVA on pbs last night talking indepth about eclipses and their frequency. The gist wad that they have known how to predict them to within 4 minutes and they occur about every 7 years