‘Ring Of Fire’ Slides Across U.S. Saturday: When To Look Up

ACROSS AMERICA — Tens of millions of Americans have a front-row seat to Saturday’s “ring of fire” annular solar eclipse, a phenomenon that won’t be seen again in the U.S. for another 16 years.

An annular solar eclipse occurs as the moon lines up precisely between Earth and the sun, blotting out all but the sun’s outer rim. The eclipse will be a celestial showstopper for tens of millions in a 125-mile wide path stretching from Oregon to Texas into Central and South America who will see the bright, blazing border, or ring of fire, around the moon for as long as five minutes.

The crescent-shaped partial eclipse, in which the moon appears to take a “bite” out of the sun, will be visible in every U.S. state, although just barely in Hawaii, provided the skies are clear. The closer to the ring of fire path, the bigger the bite the moon will appear to take out of the sun.

The eclipse starts in the North Pacific and enters the United States over Oregon around 8 a.m. PDT Saturday and will culminate with a ring of fire a little over an hour later.

From Oregon, the eclipse will head downward across Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Texas, encompassing slivers of Idaho, California, Arizona and Colorado, before exiting into the Gulf of Mexico at Corpus Christi. It will take less than an hour for the flaming halo to traverse the United States.

From there, the ring of fire will cross Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and, finally, Brazil before its grand finale over the Atlantic.

The entire eclipse — from the moment the moon starts to obscure the sun until it’s back to normal — will last anywhere from two and one-half o three hours at any given spot. The ring of fire portion lasts from three to five minutes, depending on location.

Even if it’s cloudy, the eerie daytime darkness associated with solar eclipses is still noticeable, according to NASA. And remember, you’ll need ceretified solar eclipse glasses to view either the partial eclipse or the ring of fire.

Sunglasses won’t cut it. If you don’t have glasses, you can look indirectly with a pinhole projector that you can make yourself, including one made with a cereal box.

And if you want to take photos, cameras — including those on cellphones — binoculars, or telescopes need special solar filters mounted at the front end.

It will be 2039 before another ring of fire is visible in the United States, and Alaska will be the only state then in the path of totality. And it will be 2046 before another ring of fire crosses into the U.S. Lower 48. That doesn't mean they won't be happening elsewhere: The southernmost tip of South America will get one next October, and Antarctica in 2026.

Saturday’s annular eclipse is a prelude to the 2024 total solar eclipse on April 8. About 32 million people live in the path of 100 percent totality.

The April eclipse will crisscross the country in the opposite direction as Saturday’s. It will begin in the Pacific and head up through Mexico into Texas, then pass over Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, the northern fringes of Pennsylvania and New York, and New England, before cutting across Canada into the North Atlantic at New Brunswick and Newfoundland. Almost all these places missed out during the United States’ coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in 2017.

NASA and others plan a slew of observations during both eclipses, with rockets and hundreds of balloons soaring.

“It’s going to be absolutely breathtaking for science,” NASA astrophysicist Madhulika Guhathakurta told The Associated Press.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Aroh Barjatya will help launch three NASA-funded sounding rockets from New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range before, during and after Saturday’s eclipse. The goal is to see how eclipses set off atmospheric waves in the ionosphere nearly 200 miles up that could disrupt communications.

Barjatya will be just outside Saturday’s ring of fire. And he’ll miss April’s full eclipse, while launching rockets from Virginia’s Wallops Island.

“But the bittersweet moment of not seeing annularity or totality will certainly be made up by the science return,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.