The Great American Total Solar Eclipse: The Astronomical Event Of 2017?

Hailed by many as the so-called Astronomical Event of 2017, will the August 21, 2017 Great American Eclipse be able to enlighten a science-starved America under the Trump/Pence regime?

By: Ringo Bones 

The hype behind the upcoming Great American Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 make it seems as if the current occupants of The White House are not anti-science climate change deniers and yet the event could reinvigorate - and even enlighten - the current science starved Trump administration. Nonetheless, there are a lot of things to be grateful about the upcoming celestial event given that the last one – where the path of totally is right smack inside the continental United States – last happened back in 1918, almost a hundred years ago. 

The August 21 Great American Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 will have a path of totality of 70-miles or 113-kilometers wide and stretches diagonally across the continental United States from the state of Oregon to the state of South Carolina below the Mason-Dixon Line. Even the so-called “sleepy town” of Depoe Bay, Oregon – more famed for whale watching than witnessing rare celestial events - had been preparing for the great astronomical event of 2017 since last week. And if you are lucky enough to be in the path of totality by Monday, August 21, all you need to observe The Great American Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 is an eclipse shield to protect your naked eyes. Some serious eclipse buffs will nonetheless be preparing their solar eclipse photo gear and a filtered astronomical telescope. The next solar total eclipse whose path of totality falls in the continental United States will occur in 2024. 

Many also hoped that The Great American Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 could rekindle some of America’s lack of interest in science and the scientific method given that a sizable majority of them had elected a climate change denier into The White House who also believes that the NASA Apollo Moon Landings are faked by an elaborate US Government conspiracy back in the 1960s. Well, at least those in the know might be laughing if the Christian Right U.S. Department of Education secretary Betsy DeVos issues a “faith-based warning” about the heath risk faced by pregnant women on having their fetuses acquiring defects when observing a total solar eclipse – which is for all intents and purposes a faith-based superstition - when they observe The Great American Total Solar Eclipse of 2017.