Double eclipse! Or why Carbondale, Illinois is special

Double Eclipse! Blog Translation Or Why Carbondale, Illinois, Is Special Jeffrey Bryant, Software Researcher, Wolfram | Alpha Scientific Content.
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upcoming August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse is an exciting event in itself. But it is also interesting to note that on April 8, 2024, another complete solar eclipse will occur, the path of which will pass almost perpendicular to the eclipse taking place this year.



Using several commands to process the appearance and scale of the map, you can see that the city of Carbondale, Illinois, is very close to the intersection of the paths. If you live there, you can see a total solar eclipse twice in just seven years.



Let's increase the accuracy of the calculations and determine where the intersection of these two lines is. First, we will form two paths and delete the GeoPosition function names .



Then we can use RegionIntersection to find the intersection of the paths and transport the result back to GeoPosition.



Moving even closer and getting rid of some elements of the style that are redundant on a small scale, we can try to establish the intersection point of the two central eclipse trajectories.



It seems that the best place to see the longest eclipse for both places is located southwest of Carbondale, not far from the east side of Cedar Lake along the South Poplar Curve road, where it meets Salem Road. At the same time, anywhere in the above image you can see a total solar eclipse during both eclipses.



Due to this intersection, I expect that many people plan to observe solar eclipses in both 2017 and 2024. Do not wait until the last minute to plan your trip!

How often do eclipse paths intersect? We can get more information from data mining. First, we need to get the dates, lines and types of all eclipses in a given time interval. We use an interval of plus or minus 40 years from 2017 - a total of 80 years.





We save only those eclipses for which data of its path are available.



Create a set of all eclipse pairs.



Now we define a function for checking the intersection of given pairs of eclipse trajectories.



Finally, we apply this function to all pairs of eclipses and save only those that intersect.



It turns out that a little over a hundred eclipses intersect during this period of time.



We can visualize the distribution of these eclipse paths, and see that many of them occur over the oceans. The chances of crossing eclipses on land are much lower.



So enjoy the eclipses of 2017 and 2024 if you live near Carbondale, Illinois! It is unlikely that you will see such an event in the near future without much effort.

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Also Read The Blog Get Ready For 2017 Total Solar Eclipse