Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton Tom Traub, a NASA eclipse ambassador, presented on the upcoming total solar eclipse to a full house at the Warren Public Library’s Slater Room last week.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of stories focusing on the April 8 eclipse.

If you miss the total solar eclipse in the region on April 8, when will your next opportunity be?

The answer is why this event is a big deal.

Because the next time a total eclipse will blot out the sun in Warren County is October 26, 2044.

The last one? June 16, 1806.

“You’re in for a spectacular, once in a lifetime event,” Tom Traub, a NASA eclipse ambassador, said during a program held at the Warren Public Library last week.

There are two types of eclipses – lunar and solar.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the earth cuts between the sun and the moon. The solar eclipse we’ll experience next month will see the moon cut between the earth and the sun.

Solar eclipses are significantly more rare than the lunar variety.

According to NASA, this will be the last total solar eclipse visible from the contiguous United States until 2044.

“People viewing the eclipse from locations where the Moon’s shadow completely covers the Sun – known as the path of totality – will experience a total solar eclipse,” per NASA. “The sky will darken, as if it were dawn or dusk.

“Weather permitting, people along the path of totality will see the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, which is usually obscured by the bright face of the sun.”

What factors make this occurrence so exceedingly rare?

“The earth-moon system goes around the sun once a year,” Traub explained. “During that time, the moon goes around the earth 13 times.”

He said, though, that the moon’s orbit is tilted five degrees from the plane of the earth and the sun.

“Only when the tilt passes in that plane… can an eclipse occur,” Traub said. “So it’s a narrow window (that is) always changing. Those rare opportunities and windows take a while.”

He explained that the cycle of eclipses – every 18 years, 11 days and eight hours – was discovered by the Chaldeans in 3,000 BC.

Traub saw his first total solar eclipse up the east coast of the U.S. in 1970.

He said the next occurred in 1988 over the western Pacific Ocean followed by an eclipse over central Africa, eastern Europe and western Asia in 2006.

“April 8, 2024, another 18 years later, we’re back again,” he said. “(It’s) going right overhead above us.”

The total solar eclipse is one of three kinds of eclipses – partial solar eclipses are when the moon covers a portion of the Sun and an annular eclipse occurs, according to NOAA, when the moon passes directly between the sun and earth but does not completely cover the sun.

Traub said that any individual location can expect a total eclipse every 350 to 400 years.

“That’s how rare an event it is,” he said.

In addition to the rarity, these events also happen quickly.

“Each eclipse only covers a tiny path of the Earth,” Traub said, and totality “only lasts for a few minutes.”

That path, he added, is only 110 miles wide.

Historical data further proves the point.

Traub said that eclipse data from 1,500 BC to 3,000 AD shows a total of 1,761 eclipses, with most of them being of the partial variety.

“Out of those,” he said, “only 34 were total or annular eclipses.”

With the next total solar eclipse in Warren 120 years off, Traub stressed that “this is your once in a lifetime event.”