Talk:Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024

Incorrect timescale in Infobox

The infobox reports Greatest Eclipse at 18:18:29 and specifies that times are in UTC. However www.timeanddate.com reports maximum eclipse at 18:17:21 UTC which I checked to be correct using JPL planetary ephemerides DE432 and applying light time corrections. The 18:18:29 is correct if in TDB or TT timescale not UTC. Bgodard (talk) 11:12, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

@Bgodard@0718651007 41.81.75.17 (talk) 14:00, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

List of major cities in the path of totality

The <ref> identifies these as "a list of selected cities", not major ones. For instance, Sikeston, Missouri, has a population of 16,291 and no, I'd never heard of it. In any case, the section largely repeats the city lists in the individual country breakdowns. I suggest its deletion, or the use of a better source. Moscow Mule (talk) 01:30, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree. I think we need a criterion, perhaps a minimum population, and if any US or Mexican state or Canadian province under totality doesn't have a city that big, the largest city in that state or province to experience totality. I'm not arguing that this is the best plan, but I do think we need to standardize the list somehow. Cape Girardeau, MO is more than twice the size of Sikeston, MO, and it's not on the list. That just looks weird. New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador should probably have representation too. Maybe call the section "Cities and communities in the path of totality" without calling it a list, which might imply that it's comprehensive or only major cities. Those are my thoughts. Dcs002 (talk) 05:42, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Restricting it to cities with populations of (eg) 250,000 and over, for instance, but adopting your very good idea of including the largest city in any state/province that doesn't meet that threshold to ensure representation. The problems would be WP:RS (local papers?) and the perennial wiki-squabbles over "city proper" and "metro area", and the danger would be WP:OR. But it'd certainly be better than the current random collection. Moscow Mule (talk) 18:43, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I think WP:RS would be a simple map of the path of totality from NASA or the like that shows city names. Population would be a simple matter of finding the highest population in the region, which seems to me a problem of simple arithmetic, which explicitly falls outside of WP:OR. I'll also reiterate the idea of using the term "communities" in the section title (e.g., Cities and communities in the path of totality) to keep the squabbles to a minimum, as "communities" is an ambiguous term. Dcs002 (talk) 23:27, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

The best set of maps I've seen is at Maps of the eclipse path, if you feel inspired. Complete and detailed. Moscow Mule (talk) 01:07, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Those are truly excellent maps, but they don't indicate cities in every state, of any size (e.g., OK, TN, NH). I could just correlate them with Google maps and find the most populated community, but I'm always afraid of WP:OR. Dcs002 (talk) 04:13, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Sorry we've not been able to find a way to resolve this. The Space.com ref in the introduction would be a WP:RS for the ten largest cities, but I can still the merit of producing a list of all cities above a certain population threshold. Meanwhile, the article still identifies some incongruous entries (dunno: under 50,000?) as "major cities", while others with 250,000 plus don't appear. Moscow Mule (talk) 20:37, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I still like the idea of adding "and communities" to the descriptor.Maybe we don't need separate communities in each state or province, but maybe every hundred or more miles, maybe every 200 km or so - something like that, something with an objective formula that can be demonstrated to be neutral and not discounting any region. (NASA also has a list of "major cities" that has the same problems.) I hope we're not struggling to fight a problem that doesn't exist. Maybe we are? Dcs002 (talk) 23:31, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm surprised that there are so few of us balking at taking a random webpage's "list of selected cities" and labeling it "list of major cities" (Sikeston (16,291)? Carbondale (25,083)? Riverside (24,474)? but not Monclova (231,107)?). You and I have both come up with good suggestions for improving the accuracy and relevance of this list but they've all foundered on WP:RS. I'm now giving serious WP:BOLD consideration to just swapping it out for the space.com top ten. Wonder how long that'd stand before being reverted... Moscow Mule (talk) 00:07, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a bold edit, especially after discussing the matter here and offering alternatives. People with strong feelings are free to participate, and if you make a bold edit and some people don't like it, the worst that will happen is more people will join the discussion. (And yeah, someone might revert it. Mention this discussion in your edit summary, and maybe they won't be quick to revert.)

One thing just occurred to me - Carbondale had a MASSIVE turnout of visitors to watch the eclipse because of very public promotions they did, and the large university facilities they have there to host huge events. They were also at the crosshairs of the two total solar eclipses in 2017 & 2024. Their population might not be a fair reflection of their notability as a site within the path of totality. (I'm obviously not an RS, but we had an easy drive eastward until we hit Carbondale, and it was about 5 hours from there to Paducah. Carbondale was nutz!) So there's another fuzzy factor to consider. I don't know which viewing sites were like that. Dcs002 (talk) 00:28, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Effect on animals

I've found several sources describing the effect the eclipse had on animals, wild, in captivity, and companion animals. I'd like to write that up in the next day or so (maybe yet tonight). There's a story about two tortoises in Ft Worth that reared (the zookeeper didn't know they could do that) and slammed against the steel door to their indoor pen, causing damage, either because of the stress of the eclipse or because they thought it was night, which means feeding time. Lots of good information out there, including one zoo where the animals hardly seemed to notice. If anyone else is working on animal behavior during the eclipse, please let me know so we can work together. Thanks! Dcs002 (talk) 03:41, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Does anybody have an opinion on whether I use the term "zoo animals" vs. "animals in captivity" for that subsection heading? My instinct is to use the latter, but I'd prefer to use the term that will cause the least controversy, and I have no idea which term (if either) that would be. Please reply if you have an opinion. Thanks!

(BTW, I'm writing my draft of this section in my sandbox. You can look at what I have at sandbox draft of eclipse effect on animals and leave me a comment here.) Dcs002 (talk) 06:56, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I know I'm writing to myself, but I just want to put it out there that I plan to go with "zoo animals" because farm animals and pets can also be said to be animals in captivity. Dcs002 (talk) 00:19, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I added the section under "Impact". I think there were a lot more human impacts than the few mentioned. Dcs002 (talk) 03:15, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I searched Wikimedia Commons to find a picture of an animal during the eclipse, and all I found was a cat wearing eclipse glasses. So I moved the bird picture to that section. I don't mean to promote my own picture, but I couldn't find anything else. I imagine there are much better illustrations of animals during the eclipse. Anyone have ideas? Dcs002 (talk) 05:27, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

@Dcs002 I have some pictures I took of the lions at the Buffalo Zoo during the eclipse that I could upload, but it doesn't show the sun at the same time so it could've just been a picture of lions at dusk. In any case, there's a story about how the lions reacted to the eclipse at https://www.wivb.com/total-solar-eclipse-april-8-2024/buffalo-zoo-creates-a-unique-experience-for-eclipse-watchers/ that could be used as a source. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:25, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

That's awesome! Do they appear to be reacting to the eclipse? If they're in the dark or twilight, does your image metadata say what time the picture was taken (so we can know if it was the eclipse or sunset)? I think lions sneering at the dark sky or something would be a cool image! Can you just post something to Wikimedia Commons, or put the image here (and please move the eclipse bird pic back to the gallery if you do please)? I don't own this article or this section. I don't decide what the best image is for the section. I just moved my eclipse bird image there because it was the only animal image I could find for this eclipse. I know someone's got something better! Dcs002 (talk) 23:06, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

BTW, the way things are shaping up, there is room for an additional photo, perhaps your lion photo, as an illustration of zoo animal behavior during the eclipse. There is room at the beginning of the "Zoo animals" section, maybe leaving the bird picture (or something better) to represent wildlife. Dcs002 (talk) Dcs002 (talk) 01:37, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Image suggestion for prominences

Prominences were visible around the eclipse, though because the size of the lunar disk was so much larger than that of the sun, only prominences on one limb were visible at a time.

As prominences could only be seen on the eastern or western limb, never both at the same time, and IMO the ones on the eastern limb were quite spectacular, if under-represented in the photos we have, I combined two images from WM Commons and made this spliced image after resizing & rotating the image on the left and reducing its brightness to loosely match the one on the right. I would really like to see the eastern limb (left side of photo) prominences represented in this article. Any thoughts about using this combined image? Any true graphic artists out there who can do a better job than my hack amateur work? Please step up! This is a composite of the image that's there already in place to illustrate prominences plus another one from Cleveland. The colors are obviously not matched, but the rotation is matched within a degree or so. (I'm not the one to match colors - my color vision is quite limited.) Dcs002 (talk) 04:03, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Very good image. Yes, someone should work on it, to both make the images as close to the originals as possible, and maybe make the white line a different color (it overwhelms the intent), maybe a dark blue but still an evident central-dividing line. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:14, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

The more I look at and zoom in on your image the better its usefulness and interesting concept stand out. The white line even grows on me, seems to imply the pages of a book. Thank you for an inviting and unique look at the numerous prominences. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:24, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

The white line doesn't represent the north/south axis either. The whole image would need to be rotated about 24 degrees CCW to make the white line meaningful at the north/south axis on the sun. It's rotated the way it is because of the Earth's tilted axis and the time of day + latitude where the image was shot. This image is corrected (approximately) to what would be seen in Connecticut from a camera that was correctly oriented to the horizon. I'm not sure that's meaningful if an image is going to be rotated to match another image, both of which are out of rotation with the sun's axis. (It might be best to orient this with the sun's axis to make it match the other two images in the set, the ones taken from solar observatories.) I know making images like this is a perilous undertaking here, and I hope it can be done right, preferably with help from someone more skilled than I am. Dcs002 (talk) 04:54, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

East and west limb prominences from two separate photos

Here's another version, rotated so the poles align with the observatory images. I was thinking of adding N, S, W, E labels to show the poles and to illustrate the reversal of west & east on south-facing astronomical imaging (i.e., the left side of the image is east, so the left limb is the east limb). The caption is just a placeholder for now. Dcs002 (talk) 05:22, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Solar eclipses of 2022–2025 - hide series by default?

I don't know how series tags work or how or where they are edited, but can this series be hidden by default, as all the other series are, with a button available to open the series? Thanks! Dcs002 (talk) 03:35, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

So I just learned something new today. I defaulted the table to collapsed, but I don't know how to put it in a light gray box like the rest of the collapsed tables. I think it should have that box around it to highlight the fact that it's another collapsed table like those around it. Dcs002 (talk) 04:13, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

It just required changing the header formatting in {{Solar eclipse set 2022–2025}} from "|+" to "!". It now displays in this "gray box" way in all six articles that use the template, which may or may not be wanted. 06:51, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Strange caption on a video.

One of the videos has the following caption: "BOTTOM: National Solar Observatory GONG telescope movie of solar activity in H-Alpha for the day of the April 8, 2024 eclipse, showing how prominences hardly changed during the eclipse." It seems to imply that an eclipse might influence prominences in some way. Prominences can change rapidly or slowly, but eclipses have no influence on the phenomenon. I suggest changing "showing how prominences hardly changed during the eclipse" to simply "showing prominences during the eclipse".

Quirkipedia (talk) 00:33, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

"April 8, 2024 (Monday)" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect April 8, 2024 (Monday) has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 September 16 § April 8, 2024 (Monday) until a consensus is reached. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:16, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

"Great American Total Solar Eclipse" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Great American Total Solar Eclipse has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 March 18 § Great American Total Solar Eclipse until a consensus is reached. A1Cafel (talk) 09:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

"Greatest American Eclipse" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Greatest American Eclipse has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 March 18 § Greatest American Eclipse until a consensus is reached. A1Cafel (talk) 09:38, 18 March 2025 (UTC)