Weather
2024 Solar Eclipse: When To Look Up In Connecticut
Forecasters are calling for mostly sunny skies across Connecticut with temperatures as high as 64 degrees — prime eclipse weather!
CONNECTICUT — Have you got your special glasses ready?
It will be around two decades before you'll need them again, but it'll be all anyone talks about on Monday, in the lead-up to the total solar eclipse.
Only our yellow star’s spiky corona will be visible in the 15 states in the path of totality, which extends from Texas to Maine in the United States. We’ll see a slightly less dramatic blockage of the sun in Connecticut with 92 percent totality as the moon slips between the sun and Earth.
Find out what's happening in Across Connecticutfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Below is your complete guide to viewing the sun’s disappearing act in Connecticut and beyond:
When You’ll See What
Find out what's happening in Across Connecticutfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Here are the eclipse times to keep in mind on Monday:
Partial eclipse begins: 2:13 p.m.
Maximum: 3:27 p.m.
Partial ends: 4:37 p.m.
What Will The Weather Be Like?
As of Monday morning, the National Weather Service forecast calls for mostly clear skies in the Hartford area and throughout most of the state.
What’s Happening Around Connecticut?
Western Connecticut State University is inviting the public to witness the partial solar eclipse on the WCSU Midtown campus, 181 White St. in Danbury. Weather permitting, astronomy instructors and volunteers will lead safe solar viewing and eclipse-related activities from 1:45 to 4:45 p.m. outside the Science Building.
The Leitner Family Observatory & Planetarium at Yale University in New Haven will be hosting an eclipse viewing event. Bring your own glasses.
The Connecticut Science Center in Hartford is holding an Eclipse Party from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets available online here.
The Mystic Seaport Museum's Treworgy Planetarium will be offering a series of free activities for visitors to learn about the eclipse. More information here.
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection will be hosting its own watching event at Camp Harkness, Harkness Memorial State Park, and Waterford Beach from 1 to 4:45 p.m. There is more info online here.
Lyman Orchards in Middlefield will host an eclipse event targeting kids, from 1 to 5 p.m. Monday. The first 70 people who show up will get free eclipse glasses with any Apple Barrel Farm Market purchase. More info here.
Be Sure To Protect Your Eyes
Except during the brief total phase of a total solar eclipse, when the sun’s face is completely obscured by the moon, it is not safe to look directly at the sun without protective eye equipment, according to NASA.
The American Astronomical Society has a list of vendors whose eclipse glasses have been certified as safe. The organization specifically warns against bargain hunting for eclipse glasses from online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay or Temu because counterfeit glasses have infiltrated retail chains. Wherever you acquire protective eyewear, it should meet or exceed the international safety standard of ISO 12312-2:2015.
Keep this in mind, too: Viewing any part of the bright sun through a camera lens, binoculars, or a telescope without a special-purpose solar filter secured over the front of the optics will instantly cause severe eye injury.
One other safe way to view the eclipse is with a do-it-yourself pinhole projector that shows the sun on a nearby surface. The American Astronomical Society has pinhole projector DIY instructions.
A Bigger Deal Than 2017
The duration of totality in the United States will be up to 4 minutes and 24 seconds in Eagle Pass, Texas, beginning at 1:27 p.m. CDT. For comparison, the eclipse reaches totality about an hour later, at 3:29 p.m. EDT in Jackman, Maine, and lasts about 3 minutes and 26 seconds.
Totality will last twice as long as in the coast-to-coast solar eclipse in 2017, and the number of people in the path of totality — an estimated 32 million people — is much greater.
Besides Texas and Maine, states seeing totality include Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont and New Hampshire.
Eclipse Opens Scientific Window
Another thing that makes the 2024 solar eclipse markedly different from the 2017 event is that it’s occurring as the sun is at its peak activity cycle, called solar maximum. In 2017, the sun was approaching minimum. This year’s eclipse opens a unique window for scientists to study the sun’s corona.
“The eclipse that we have coming up in 2024 is going to be a very different eclipse from what we saw in 2017 because this corona that we see is going to have much more structure,” Lisa Upton, a solar scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, told Scientific American.
The violent solar storms occurring right now are responsible for auroras that dance far outside their Arctic and Antarctic ranges but also carry the potential to knock out internet satellites for months, take down power grids, and interfere with navigation satellites. Right now, these events happen with little warning, but scientists are working on their ability to predict space weather.
When Is The Next Eclipse?
It will be March 30, 2033, before another total solar eclipse touches the United States, and that’s only on the tip of Alaska. It’ll be Aug. 12, 2044, before the next eclipse sweeps across the lower 48 states, with parts of Montana and North Dakota experiencing totality.
Don’t Worry About This
Legends in ancient cultures attributed the temporary disappearance of the sun to celestial dragons and other mythical creatures, wolves and even giant frogs who either ate the sun or stole it. Among some cultures, the solar eclipse was a foreboding sign the gods were angry or that the siblings the sun and the moon were quarreling, according to timeanddate.com. In many cultures, “eclipse” means to eat.
Among the Pomo, an indigenous group of people who lived in the Northwest United States, the literal translation of “eclipse” is “got bit by a bear.” The legend is that a bear mixed it up with the sun and took a bite out of it and then decided to have a slice of the moon as well, causing a lunar eclipse.
Scientists and astronomers long ago solved the riddle of the solar eclipse — it’s simply what happens when the moon masks the sun as it passes in front of it. Still, some superstitions remain in modern culture, including that solar eclipses are dangerous for pregnant women and their unborn children, or that food cooked during an eclipse is poisonous.
In Italy, though, the superstitions aren’t as gloomy as the sky when the moon blots out the sun. Instead, the eclipse is prime flower planting time; it’s believed they will bloom brighter and more colorful than flowers planted at other times of the year. Other claims about negative effects on human behavior have been debunked by scientists.
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