I would add to Steve's points that although total solar eclipses tracks often occur on the Earth those tracks are extremely narrow and of relatively short duration so observing a total solar eclipse from a fixed Earth location is a rare event (typically 3 times per thousand years according to a pamphlet I have in front of me.) Despite the improbability for one such event, Carbondale, Illinois will observe two (!) total solar eclipses in the next 7 years (in 4 days when it will be near the maximum totality point of the totality track that occurs close to the middle of the longitude range of the track, and also on April 08 2024 where again it will be close to the maximum totality point). There is a birthday paradox occurring here so you have to be careful about getting too wild about improbability claims for such double solar eclipes in 7 years or less for any fixed location on Earth since all you need for such an event to occur is two totality tracks crossing each other in 7 years or less.
I am sure somebody has made that calculation considering what is going on for Carbondale in the next 7 years, and maybe narrowing it even further by constraining the calculation so that the crossing occurs near the maximum (say from the 45 per cent point to the 55 per cent point of the track) of each totality track. I haven't yet found such a calculation, but I am sure such crossings near the totality maximum for each don't occur very often. So Carbondale, Illinois is clearly going to be "the" lucky total solar eclipse location for quite some time before some other point on Earth inherits that designation. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
