Weather
2024 Solar Eclipse In Illinois: What You Need To Know For April 8
For now, Monday's forecast calls for mostly sunny skies, increasing Illinois' odds for a great view of the solar eclipse.
ILLINOIS — Excitement is building in Illinois for Monday’s 2024 total solar eclipse, a celestial phenomenon that Americans won’t see again for two decades.
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 and includes Illinois.
While southern Illinois is in the path of totality, the Chicago area could see as much as 94 percent of totality.
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Below is your complete guide to viewing the sun’s disappearing act in Illinois and beyond:
When You’ll See What
Here are the eclipse times to keep in mind on Monday (all times local):
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- Partial eclipse begins: 12:51 p.m.
- Totality begins: 1:33 p.m.
- Maximum: 2:07 p.m.
- Totality ends: 2:41 p.m.
- Partial ends: 3:21 p.m.
What Will The Weather Be Like?
As of Friday, the National Weather Service forecast called for mostly sunny skies, breezy weather and a high of 67 degrees.
By Monday morning, showers and storms that could hit Sunday night should have moved out of the area, according to the National Weather Service.
Eclipse Happenings In Illinois
Southern Illinois is on the centerline of totality, celebrating the second total solar eclipse in seven years. SIU-Carbondale, in partnership with NASA, will host the Southern Illinois Crossroads Eclipse Festival. The astronomical celebration features a variety of world-class events and activities April 5 through April 8, concluding with a guided eclipse experience at Saluki Stadium.
Standard tickets are available for $25, with VIP Stadium Club packages available for $200. Parking passes are available for $35 and are required to park on the SIU campus on Eclipse Day. Tickets can be purchased on SIU Eclipse.
If you're one of millions of Americans planning to make the trek to totality, there are plenty of towns along the Mother Road planning eclipse celebrations, which can be found on Illinois Route 66. Herald Square in Uptown Collinsville will be offering free solar eclipse viewing glasses for all in attendance, live music, a fire-blowing demonstration and shopping.
Old Herald Brewery & Distillery created a special craft brew — Solar Shandy — and will collaborate with Big Muddy Brewery to create Dark Moon Whiskey. Great Rivers and Routes Solar Eclipse landing page offers updates to events and activities, many within driving distance from the Chicago area.
Thirty-one Illinois state parks and sites managed by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources are in the eclipse’s path of totality. Numerous other parks and sites lie just outside the path of totality, offering equally spectacular views of the eclipse, though for shorter periods of time. Reservations for camping at an IDNR-managed campground during the April 8 total solar eclipse are highly recommended, and can be made by going to Explore More Illinois or by calling 866-716-6550.
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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