Last minute eclipse travel planning for data nerds

Normally Thursday posts are for subscribers, but timely info oughta be shared.

No one's ever accused me of being good at timely planning.

So, since I live in NYC, I've decided that I'm gonna pack the family into the car, and drive northwards until we're in the path of totality for the upcoming April 8th eclipse. Luckily, I was smart enough to have bought eclipse glasses and lens filters for the occasion. What I didn't do was figure out WHERE to go.

Luckily, there's been tons of resources out there to help figure at least some of this stuff out.

First, I needed to figure out the target zone for my travel. And that's when I found a "more precise" map of the total eclipse at Besselian Elements. Specifically, they calculated the effects of the topography of the Moon and the Earth's surface to get a much better idea of where the edge of totality is. Because how cool would it be to find a high vantage point that lets you see the shadow sweeping by? I really wish they gave more insight into how they made the calculations =(

While seeing the edge must be very interesting, just knowing to aim for a place somewhere in the dark zone is good enough for my purposes. Time for the next problem – Upstate New York is quite uneven thanks to the ice age glacial action. There's lots of long narrow lakes and valleys. I'd be really upset if I picked a spot where the eclipse winds up being blocked by a big hill or tree line. So I need to figure out roughly where the sun was going to be.

Initially, I was going to boot up the amazing Skyfield package, an Python package that is used to calculate the positions of astronomical objects. Years ago, I had used it to plot when lunar eclipses happen in order to ask the question of whether we can use data analysis to predict them like ancient civilizations did. I know that the package has the capability of calculating the position of the sun at a certain datetime for any given GPS coordinates. But it's 11PM right now and I just didn't have the time to sit down and flip through the documentation to relearn the package.

Luckily, there's tools that others have built to help visualize the sun's location!

Here I just set the date to eclipse day, plonk the marker at one of my candidate spots, and tell it to calculate. It'll then show a big arc with tick marks denoting the position of the sun. Since the eclipse is supposed to start (first contact) around 2pm local time and hit totality around 3pm, I now know that I'll be looking roughly south-ish, and 50 degrees above the horizon. So long as I'm not trying to park right up against a forest or cliff, things will likely work out.

That said, I had to spend a bunch of time on Google Maps searching for places that might potentially let us stop and observe relatively undisturbed. The biggest risk at this point is the roads are going to be packed with people doing the same trip and I want to avoid being caught in a giant traffic jam on some back road in a mountain.

Finally, we'll have to check for weather conditions. This one is going to be complicated because we might have to make last minute change of plans if cloud cover is forecast for the day. If we're aware of it early enough we might be able to reroute to a different spot. For now it looks like there's a solid chance of sunny skies both the day before and after. Hopefully our luck holds out.

So anyways, I'll be running around with a car, family, and camera over the weekend. To those who are also going to make an outing of it, best of luck! Hopefully we can bring pictures back for everyone who can't make the trip.

[1PM update: There's even more tools! This one will let you click on a map and calculate the exact timing of the eclipse for that point! For example Buffalo, NY below. Most importantly it shows you how long totality will last.]

[6PM update: More people sharing tools with me, this one is a collection of weather models and cloud cover predictions.]