People across the country - and in Delaware - are preparing to view Monday’s solar eclipse.
What now draws crowds to watch and photograph once put fear in people when they occurred.
We now know eclipses hold to the laws of math, occurring on the same path, appearing in the same location - with a slight twist - 54 years apart.
But in days of shorter life spans, our ancestors may have only witnessed a couple of eclipses in a lifetime. And those would have been harder to understand, occurring in locations eight hours apart, accounting for differences in the paths of the sun, the moon and the earth.
University of Delaware Assistant Professor of Astronomy Sally Dotson Robertson explains that early humans might have worked the science out except for that one twist.
"If there weren’t this little eight hours extra in the recurrence time in eclipses, then they would have happened three times as often and people would have gotten used to them a lot sooner,” she said.
This eclipse is special because its path of totality will last four minutes and 27 seconds, nearly double that of the total solar eclipse seen in the United States in 2017.
It will begin iat 2:07pm, reach its maximum — just under 90 percent — about 3:23 p.m. and be done by 4:34 p.m.
Robertson reminds anyone planning to watch to follow some basic viewing rules to protect your eyes"
Either eclipse glasses or a telescope with a solar filter, or try the colander trick, that’s how you’ll get to see the eclipse. Otherwise, if you just step outside and you hope to be aware of the eclipse, just based on the fact that it’s darker, your eyes are going to trick you and you’re not going to notice that,” she said.
Right now, the weather is expected to cooperate with viewing in Delaware.
