Solar Eclipse Planning Workshop, 9-10 April 2021, Virtually Anywhere

About the Workshop | Registrants List | Workshop Program | Session Recordings | Workshop Links

A solar eclipse will be visible over most of North America on Saturday, October 14, 2023, followed by another just six months later on Monday, April 8, 2024. Tens of millions of people will travel into the roughly 120-mile-wide paths across the continent where they can see maximum coverage of the Sun by the Moon. Within the 2023 path the eclipse will be annular, or ring-shaped, as the Moon will not quite completely cover the Sun, leaving a ring of brilliant sunlight remaining. Within the 2024 path the eclipse will become total, with it abruptly getting as dark as deep twilight, revealing the magnificent solar corona around the Moon's black silhouette. Outside these paths, nearly everyone in North America will witness two partial solar eclipses. These events come only a handful of years after the August 21, 2017, total solar eclipse that crossed the continental U.S. — the first such event in a generation.

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) Solar Eclipse Task Force ran a series of workshops to prepare the nation for the 2017 solar eclipse. These were instrumental in helping communities in the path of totality manage an influx of visitors; in developing and disseminating appropriate eye-safety information nationwide; and in coordinating the efforts of numerous scientific, educational, governmental, and other organizations to avoid unnecessary overlap.

Workshop Banner
Map courtesy Michael Zeiler, GreatAmericanEclipse.com.

A Virtual Eclipse Planning Workshop

Looking ahead to 2023-24, the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force organized the first in a new series of annual planning workshops at the 234th AAS meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, in June 2019. Plans for a 2020 workshop were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. While we intend to resume annual in-person workshops in 2022, we don't want to wait till then to get the eclipse-planning community back together. As the countdown reached T (totality) minus 3 years, we held a virtual workshop on Friday-Saturday, April 9-10, 2021. We welcomed eclipse enthusiasts, community leaders, and other stakeholders from both inside and outside the paths of annularity (2023) and/or totality (2024) from the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. The path of annularity in October 2023 goes not only through the U.S., but also through Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. The path of totality in April 2024 goes through Mexico and Canada as well as the U.S. As in 2017, nearly all of North America will experience at least a deep partial eclipse during both events.

This workshop featured talks and panel discussions on issues related to eye safety, local community planning, and state/regional/national planning. Attendees included professional and amateur astronomers; formal and informal educators; representatives of tourism bureaus and the hospitality industry; officials from departments of transportation, state- and national-level parks and forests, law-enforcement agencies, and emergency-management organizations; and others involved (or wanting to become involved) in preparing their communities for the upcoming North American solar eclipses.

The workshop was held via Zoom on Friday-Saturday, April 9-10, 2021, from 1 pm to 5 pm Eastern time (10 am to 2 pm Pacific time) both days.

Registrants List

Our list of workshop registrants is available on a separate page.

Workshop Program

Video recordings are available on the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force YouTube channel via the links below. Where possible, we have also provided copies of the presentation slides as PDFs. These are for your personal use only. If you wish to publish or otherwise reproduce any of the content in these files, you must obtain permission from the presenters — otherwise you may be in violation of copyright law. If you need help contacting a presenter, email the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force.

Day 1 — Friday, 9 April 2021

10:00 am PDT (1:00 pm EDT, 17:00 UTC) — Session 1 — Setting the Stage (YouTube Video)

  • Introduction to the Coming North American Eclipses (Angela Speck)
  • Introduction to the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force (Rick Fienberg & Claire Raftery)

11:45 am PDT (2:45 pm EDT, 18:45 UTC) — Break

  • Virtual Networking Lounge Hosted by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

12:15 pm PDT (3:15 pm EDT, 19:15 UTC) — Session 2 — Solar Eclipse Eye Safety (YouTube Video)

  • Moderator: Rick Fienberg
  • Introduction to Solar Eclipse Eye Safety (Ralph Chou)
  • Panel Discussion (Rick Fienberg, Sophie Margolis, Ralph Chou)

2:00 pm PDT (5:00 pm EDT, 21:00 UTC) — Social Hour

  • Virtual Networking Lounge Hosted by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

3:00 pm PDT (6:00 pm EDT, 22:00 UTC) — End of Day 1

Day 2 — Saturday, 10 April 2021

9:00 am PDT (12:00 pm EDT, 16:00 UTC) — Social Hour

  • Virtual Networking Lounge Hosted by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

10:00 am PDT (1:00 pm EDT, 17:00 UTC) — Session 3 — Local Community Planning (YouTube Video)

11:45 am PDT (2:45 pm EDT) — Break

  • Virtual Networking Lounge Hosted by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

12:15 pm PDT (3:15 pm EDT, 19:15 UTC) — Session 4 — State & National Planning (YouTube Video)

2:00 pm PDT (5:00 pm EDT, 21:00 UTC) — End of Workshop

Session Recordings

Recordings of the sessions are posted on our YouTube channel.

Workshop Links

The following resources were mentioned during the workshop, in the presentations and/or in the chat.

AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force

Astronomical Society of the Pacific

Eclipse Maps & More

Eye Safety

Local Planning

National Planning

  • Tyler Nordgren’s Space Art Travel Bureau (Posters etc.)
  • NASA’s Braille Book, Getting a Feel for Solar Eclipses, by Cassandra Runyon et al.
  • Indigenous Education Institute
  • NASA Eclipse Community Listserv
    • Building off the success of the listserv used during the run-up to the 2017 total solar eclipse across America, NASA is creating a method for communication between people preparing for the 2023 and 2024 eclipses and beyond. This system will include both NASA and non-NASA personnel and eclipse enthusiasts who are interested in learning more about the upcoming North American eclipses and related events. Information on trainings, presentations, telecons, workshops, and other general information that NASA and the American Astronomical Society (AAS) want to share will be sent to list members. There will be a list moderator to monitor outgoing and incoming messages to ensure that only accurate and appropriate information is shared via respectful conversation.

Questions? Email the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force.