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|< < Prev Comic #2921 (April 18, 2024)

Eclipse Path Maps

Title text: Okay, this eclipse will only be visible from the Arctic in February 2063, when the sun is below the horizon, BUT if we get lucky and a gigantic chasm opens in the Earth in just the right spot...

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a TORNADO WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP WINNER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.

A total solar eclipse occurred on April 8, 2024 in North America, ten days before this comic. This comic comments on the fact that most solar eclipses happen on territories not easily reachable by humans, places with weather conditions that make viewing the eclipse less appealing, like cloudy skies (mentioned previously in 2915: Eclipse Clouds and 2917: Types of Eclipse Photo), fog, or tornadoes (also a recurring subject on xkcd), or areas that experience only a short period of totality.

Zone label	Geography	Suitability for observation
Zone where totality lasts 1-2 seconds	Land	No stated issues for visiting, but rendered all too brief an experience for astronomical reasons.
Bay of shifting ice	Water (part frozen)	Open water might make this location accessible by boated observers. Solid ice might grant observers ready access by skidoo, ski and/or skid-plane. Shifting ice causes problems for all these modes of access.
Shipwreck cove	Water/Coast	The name describes the likely impediment to any boat access.
Desert so harsh they train Mars astronauts there	Land (peninsula)	Implied inhospitable, and probably a lack of any normal transport/accommodation infrastructure.
Sea of rocky crags and maelstroms	Water (straits)	Yet more risk of nautical hazards, including strong rotating currents. Possibly a nod to Scylla and Charbydis from The Odyssey.
[State department travel advisory]	Island	Unknown risk, but probably involves some form of political instability, war, or major health hazard that makes unnecessary visits highly inadvisable. May also be a result of adverse weather effects. Or perhaps all of these at the same time.
Isle of perpetual fog	Island (inc. littoral zones?)	Meteorologically unfortunate (ground visibility; may not fully obscure the skyward view).
Nice, scenic, accessible area (6 square miles, 40,000,000 visitors expected)	Land	Apparently ideal in all respects. Except for the crowds. (Would entail up to three people for every square metre, even before accounting for the existing population and obstructions, as well as a high probability of travel congestion.)
Tornado capital of the world	Land	Meteorologically unfortunate (frequent disruptive wind vortices, and cloud cover likely).
Area where the eclipse will be low in the sky, behind the tornadoes	Land	Astronomically disadvantageous, with added complications from the neighbouring weather system.

The title text mentions the solar eclipse of February 2063, and claims it will only be visible from the Arctic, though in fact this annular eclipse will traverse through the Indian Ocean. The eclipse in the comic would supposedly happen when the Sun would be below the horizon, which is a contradiction in terms, since an eclipse is only an eclipse from the standpoint of the viewer — it is equivalent to saying that the eclipse is not visible from that location, but is visible from a location over the horizon, at a point that is at the other end of a direct straight line through the Earth that is directed 'down' towards the unrisen Sun and Moon. It then jokingly suggests that a giant chasm could open up between the location being considered and the location from where it would be visible, allowing people to view it. If this did happen, the chasm itself would likely eclipse the eclipse as a spectacle. In most cases, it would also likely cause severely detrimental effects (for example, magma eruptions, tsunamis, etc.), and would therefore not be considered 'lucky' by most people, despite the small and short-term benefit of being able to view an eclipse from a previously unsuitable location.

Note

The Novaya Zemlya effect can make it possible to observe a solar eclipse when the Sun is below the horizon at the poles during certain weather conditions. Also called a "polar mirage", the effect is when an atmospheric inversion ducts sunlight along the surface of the Earth for distances up to 250 miles (400 km), which would make the Sun appear 5° higher in the sky than it actually is. This appears to be the rare situation where Randall was unaware of an obscure scientific phenomenon that would contribute to a joke.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

Every eclipse path map

[A grey band representing the totality path of an eclipse travels along the map across several labels. Labels along the path from top to bottom:]

[On land] Zone where totality lasts 1-2 seconds

[On water] Bay of shifting ice

[On water] Shipwreck cove

[On land] Desert so harsh they train Mars astronauts there

[On water] Sea of rocky crags and maelstorms

[On an island; label in square brackets] State department travel advisory

[On an island] Isle of perpetual fog

[On small part of a peninsula] Nice, scenic, accessible area (6 square miles, 40,000,000 visitors expected)

[On land] Tornado capital of the world

[On land] Area where the eclipse will be low in the sky, behind the tornadoes

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