Eleven years from today - April 8, 2024, Mississauga and the rest of Southern Ontario will be thrust into darkness during the mid-afternoon.

At 3:18, the Sun will appear as a very thin crescent with the Moon covering 98.6% of its face. The Moon's shadow will appear in the south over Lake Ontario blackening the southern sky. People south of the lake, around Niagara Falls and Buffalo will experience a total solar eclipse. Totality will last approximately 3 minutes 45 seconds.

Those interested in seeing a Total Solar Eclipse before 2024 can travel south to the central USA in August 2017.

Members of the Mississauga Centre of the RASC have been discussing forming an organized expedition to see the August 21, 2017 eclipse. No details yet but it would involve meeting at a prescribed location along the centre line to watch it as a group. The path crosses the continental USA with maximum eclipse taking place in Kentucky.

This total eclipse will last approximately 2.5 minutes. This history of this eclipse is interesting. Solar eclipses occur with some regularity in a sort of a petter called the saros cycle. Every 18 years or so the same eclipse path is traced out on the surface of the Earth, but at a different longitude. This eclipse in 2017 is of the same saros as the August 1999 eclipse which was seen in Europe, the July 1981 eclipse in Siberia and the July 1963 eclipse which was seen in Canada.

Here is a film (without audio) of that eclipse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCKsYS8bK68

From Hokkaido to Halifax some astronomers raced across Canada in the DC-8 jet to get a longer view of it. All observers saw the two spectacular effects known as the "diamond ring" and "bailey's beads." The diamond ring effect which comes just before and after the total eclipse is when the last or first sunlight shines from a valley on the moon. CBS News Archives.

So start to make plans for the 2017 and 2024 total solar eclipses.

And lets us know which total solar eclipses you have seen.

Randy Attwood Earthshine