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Must I wait centuries to see a total solar eclipse?

Not if you don't mind doing some traveling. On average, a total solar eclipse is visible about every 18 months somewhere on the Earth's surface. Unfortunately, the tracks of total solar eclipses seem to have this perverse habit of occurring over sparsely populated regions of the Earth or out over the open oceans. The planet is two-thirds water, after all.

And even though a typical eclipse track can run for several thousand miles or more, the width of that track is likely to be less than 100 miles. So, the odds are that any one particular spot on the Earth will have to wait a very long time - about 375 years) - between total solar eclipses.

But that nearly four-century wait is merely a statistical average. Indeed, the paths of different eclipses sometimes will criss-cross over a specific place, so in some cases the wait isn't so long at all.

For example: a forty-mile stretch of the Atlantic coast of Angola, just north of Lobito, experienced a total solar eclipse on June 21, 2001 and will be treated to another later this year (December 4) after a wait of less than 18 months. On the other extreme, we can cite the case of the islands of Bermuda. Their last total eclipse was on August 30, 1532 with the next one scheduled for February 16, 2352! [All about Eclipses]

Next Page: Talk about seasonal change!