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Daily Bread for 10.17.23: An Even Better Eclipse Is on the Way

 Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 59. Sunrise is 7:11 and sunset 6:08 PM for 10h 57m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM

  On this day in 1814, eight people die in the London Beer Flood.


It was rainy in Whitewater on Saturday, but better opportunities for eclipse viewing await. Matthew Cappucci reports Missed the ‘ring of fire’ solar eclipse? An even better one is coming in 2024 (‘A ‘total solar eclipse’ in six months will trace a path from Texas to Maine’):

On Saturday, tens of millions of Americans gawked skyward as the moon slid between the Earth and the sun, transforming the solar disk into a hollowed-out ring of fire for nearly five minutes. But if you missed the display, don’t fret — an even greater opportunity will arise on April 8, 2024, for residents of the Lower 48 from San Antonio to northern Maine.

This weekend’s eclipse happened during lunar apogee, the point in the moon’s orbit when it’s farthest from the Earth. That made it appear smaller in our skies, so it wasn’t large enough to fully block the sun. Only a beaded necklace of piercing sunlight protruded from behind the moon’s silent silhouette.

But April’s eclipse is a total solar eclipse, which will plunge folks from Mazatlan, Mexico, to Newfoundland into a midday darkness. The sun’s atmosphere will be briefly visible, something only ever directly seen, and charted, when the moon completely extinguishes daylight.

We’ll not be far from areas of totality:

The eclipse technically begins over the Pacific about 2,000 miles south of Hawaii. The path of totality, which will be about 120 miles wide, then comes ashore during the early afternoon in Sinaloa, Mexico, before crossing into the United States south of Del Rio, Texas. The San Antonio and Austin metros are sideswiped by the path of totality; residents in both cities ought to plan to drive west.

Then Dallas and Little Rock are in the zone, as are folks along the Ohio River in southern Illinois and northwest Kentucky. That includes Carbondale, a city of 21,000 that was also on the centerline of the Aug. 21, 2017, total solar eclipse. Indianapolis, Dayton, Cleveland, Buffalo and Rochester, N.Y., are in the path of totality. So is Montreal, at least on the south side of the city. Eventually the path crosses New Brunswick and Newfoundland before continuing over the open Atlantic.


Poland-EU relations heading for reset as new government expected following elections:

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