Never in our lives has upstate New York had a year that displayed all three of the top celestial spectacles. But it actually happened in 2024. So let’s review, briefly analyze, and see if we might get a repeat.
Total Solar Eclipse
The first was the total solar eclipse on April 8th. It was the only total solar eclipse in New York state in our lifetimes.
The last one was on January 24th 1925. The next won’t happen until May 1, 2079. That’s 154 years between New York totalities. This was the only one in that interval! A total solar eclipse even outperforms the greatest northern lights displays. It is the only celestial spectacle that is so powerful, about half of all onlookers are moved to tears by its emotional impact.
Wrap
Although weather forecasters had originally called for clear skies along its entire New York track, a weather system approaching from the southwest brought clouds that hid totality for those in Buffalo, Rochester, and Geneseo. So people in the mid-Hudson region were successful if they drove to the Adirondacks, Plattsburgh, or to Vermont. As it turned out, the Burlington area was the most packed with eclipse visitors. Observers like Bruderhof science teacher Jordan Mandel and his group had the most success by simply driving into northcentral Vermont, choosing some arbitrary small road, and asking the local farmer if they could park for a couple of hours. Another successful approach was reserving a Plattsburgh motel room a year ahead of time, going up a day before the event, and remaining overnight after the eclipse. People who did that reported fast road conditions coming and going, unlike the traffic jams experienced by those who traveled in both directions the same day.
Everyone who went was amazed. In contrast, people who stayed home and merely used solar filters to observe the partial eclipse seen from the mid Hudson and Albany areas experienced a common event that doesn’t make anyone’s top-20 list. With solar eclipses it’s really totality or nothing. At least that’s what those who’ve seen totality will tell you.
Next up
There will be a single total solar eclipse somewhere in the world during four out of every five years to come. To minimize hassles of every variety, you can’t do better than a good eclipse tour company. Of course, I shamelessly recommend that you join me, at specialinteresttours.com. We’ve leased a 1000-acre winery in the clearest part of Spain for the August 2026 totality, and will have our own Nile riverboat for the Egyptian totality of 2027. After that for several years, total solar eclipses will repeatedly happen in the Australian Outback. To see one in the United States, you’ll have to wait until March 30, 2033 in Alaska, or 2045, when you’d fight the crowds over Palm Beach and Disneyworld. Given the time and expense of reaching all coming total solar eclipses for the next half century, I suspect many will deeply regret they didn’t jump in their cars and drive to the nearby 2024 spectacle.
The Aurora Borealis
The best auroras since 1989 happened repeatedly this year over the mid-Hudson Valley. One reason is that the sun is now at its eleven-year activity maximum in terms of flares and coronal mass ejections. Even then, the last solar maximum, number 24, gave us zero aurora displays. The ones we had the past few months were mostly bright red glows that filled much of the sky. This is very unusual since green is the most common auroral color. Red happens when the aurora is unusually high. The glow is from excited oxygen at 6400 angstroms wavelength, the exact color as a red laser pointer. But red auroras almost never show detail such as shimmering curtains or animated rays. So the blobby nature of the auroras we saw was not surprising. We’ve not seen a red aurora here since the autumn of 2001. And this time it was far brighter than the display back then.
The future
Did this produce a heightened desire to see a truly animated display of the northern lights, one with curtains or other detail? If so, I’d again urge you to join me for our annual Northern Lights Expedition, which I’ve been leading for the past 30 years. Use that same website for details. I also urge aurora seekers to avoid Iceland and Scandinavia, only because those regions are so chronically cloudy. As for future auroras, solar maximum number 25 will last for another year, and then activity will greatly wane.
The comet
A naked eye comet comes along every 15 to 20 years. The current one is barely “great,” meaning visible over cities. We did have the faint naked-eye comet Neowise four years ago over our mid Hudson Valley. But now there’s comet Tsuchinon, which is equally dim. Despite some media hype claiming that it’s the comet of the century, which is just plain stupid, it is a splendid sight through ordinary binoculars and shows up beautifully when photographed. The best comet we’ve had in our lives was comet Hale-Bopp back in 1997, which remained a stunning naked eye object for 18 months in a row, something that hasn’t happened since 1811. And even that one was visible for only half as long.
The future
At first the present comet Tsuchinon only appeared low in bright twilight right after sunset. But it was almost impossible to find. Now it’s a grand sight through binoculars, or at least it was last weekend, as this is being written. Earth is rapidly moving away from the comet and it’s dimming night by night, but it’s also much higher up and visible in full darkness. It’s not hard to find if you point your binoculars at the right spot. This is a bit tricky. But if you want to give it a shot, and the comet remains bright enough to be seen naked-eye, which is totally unknown, I’d recommend going to a place with an unobstructed view toward the southwest the next clear night. At 8 p.m. look about one third of the way up the sky from the horizon. Sweep your binoculars in that region, have patience, give yourself a few minutes to find it, and once you’ve pointed at it, you’ll be delighted. The comet will keep fading and may or may not still be visible after this weekend. As for future “great comets,” they appear unpredictably, except for Halley’s Comet, which should put on a fabulous show in 2061 as if to atone for its poor performance in autumn 1985, when it was on the wrong side of the Sun to give us Earthlings a good view. Still it was visible, and I wonder how many readers were in the big crowd at Woodstock’s Andy Lee field that autumn evening in 1985, joining me to see it. Now it’s just passed its farpoint from the Sun and has started its 38 year journey back to us.
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