Get ready for the Great North American eclipse

By Geoffrey Carr

Total solar eclipses are elusive. The tracks of the shadows cast when, from Earth’s point of view, the Moon passes in front of the Sun, can be calculated millennia in advance. But those shadows may fall on the ocean, or in sparsely populated regions.

Of the 17 total eclipses since 2000, two were visible only from Antarctica and the sea surrounding it. A third could, just, be seen at the North Pole. And the track of a fourth brought visitors from all over the planet to Easter Island, which jostles with Tristan da Cunha for the title of “most remote inhabited territory”.