Life

When You Should Plan On Watching Monday's Solar Eclipse

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The current news cycle may be saturated with horrific tragedies and frankly terrifying hypotheticals, but there is one story that has continued to tread water: The Great American Solar Eclipse. So when can you see the total solar eclipse in 2017? This may be the first bit of good news you've heard today.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon moves between the Earth and the sun, completely obscuring the sun for a period that hovers around three minutes. Sure, it's a short amount of time, but rumors of the life-changing, mystical, euphoric sensation that accompanies witnessing an eclipse have thrown Americans into a frenzy. That, and the fact that the United States hasn't experienced a coast-to-coast eclipse since 1918. Folks have been waiting a long time for this moment. And they're willing to pay a bucket of money and travel hundreds of miles to snag a prime viewing spot.

On Aug. 21, the Oregon coast will be the first to catch a glimpse of the eclipse at 9:05 am PST, according to TimeAndDate.com. The moon's central shadow will then cut a 70-mile wide swath from Oregon to South Carolina, hitting prime spots in Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina.

The "maximum point," considered the best place to see the total eclipse, will be Hopkinsville, Kentucky at 1:25 pm EST. Predictably, interest and tourism to Hopkinsville has boomed. They've even set up a website, eclipseville.com, complete with a down-to-the-second countdown. For a full list of prime viewing spots across the U.S., check out this map.

For those of us not in the direct path of the eclipse, there's a good chance we'll still catch a glimpse of a partial sun obstruction. And while it may not be the transformative experience our brothers and sisters in Kentucky will have, we can still bask in the magic of a natural event that's terrified humans for millennia. Stay safe and stay spooky!