Eclipse Tour 2017

What is this all about

Likely many of you have read about the Total Solar eclipse of 2017 already. Yes, it will be a special one, but not because of any distinct properties. The eclipse on August 21st will simply be visible by far more people than one usually is. The totality band of this eclipse crosses the United States of America from West to East, thus many people will be able to get to the path of totality on the right day. And, of course, NASA is trying to spread the word as much as possible.
We do not live in the US, but that is a country where many European airlines fly to, so we will hop on some to go and see this magical event as well. Since US is the most ordinary country of all the ones we have visited for eclipses so far, many people dare to join this time. We will be 24 people (omg!) in total, 7 of them who have participate in the eclipse-tour trips before and it will be the first time for others.

 

The Solar eclipse

Animation of the eclipse path

Animation of the eclipse path

The eclipse will happen on 21st of August – different times at different places, but for us it will likely be a morning in Oregon. If the plans match the reality then the duration of the totality at the place where we will observe it will be 2 minutes and 5 seconds. It is definitely enough to be amazed, but never enough to be content…

 
To the left there is a map of the eclipse visibility in all places. The light blue circle marks partial eclipse. The black dot in the centre marks total eclipse. The time in the animation is UTC.

For more information go here:

 

Travel plan

Like other things in the US, the plan of this trip is great as well. I’d say, maybe it’s greater than some others ;)

Animation of the eclipse path

The Great Route

We will be going to the Western side of the US – not because the totality of the eclipse would be longer there (it actually will be shorter than in the middle of the US), but because the weather statistics are better there over last several years. We will need to manage more than 6000km in 4 weeks, and this is the bare minimum of the must-sees in the Western US. When the plan was being put together, new and more new ideas and facts about interesting places in this area appeared – just 200km here and there, just a couple of hours more for this or that day…
Unfortunately they had to be turned down for this trip as 4 weeks is already a hard to come-by vacation duration. No worries, we will visit the other famous observatories and the interesting aircraft retirement fields and the beautiful canyons next time!
But this time we will see a lot as well – the famous cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, the beautiful sceneries in Yosemite Valley, Big Sur, Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Antelope Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Hell’s Canyon and Barringer meteor crater, have fun in Universal Studios theme park and along Route 66, and enjoy everything else that will come up along the way.
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