Longtime chasers in the USA have held the total solar eclipse experience close to our hearts for decades. Like members of a secret, nerdy travel club, we’ve invested considerable time and treasure to stand, in awe, in the shadow. And that all changed for the better in 2017, when totality swept across the country for the first time since 1979 (and that day was mostly clouded out anyway). Americans could finally see a TSE on their home soil, requiring no passport and limited dollars.

Now, seven years later, TSE 2024 is garnering even more excitement and ramped-up coverage. True, the fact that the eclipse affects more populated areas is a factor, but I think it’s because America painfully learned the difference between a 99.9% partial and a total solar eclipse the hard way, after the fact, on August 22, 2017.

I’m watching the news coverage and the “how to use your eclipse glasses” and the “what to do with a kitchen colander” segments on morning shows with fondness not unlike what I imagine parents feel on Christmas morning as their kids unwrap their Red Ryder BB guns.

Soon, weather permitting, more than 30 million Americans will watch what was once an exclusive show behind a velvet rope—and I couldn’t be happier for them. 

Powerchaser Kate Russo (follow her on the socials) recently shared an article from Scientific American titled “Eclipse Psychology: When the Sun and Moon Align, So Do We—How a total solar eclipse creates connection, unity and caring among the people watching”. This is true, and one of the most overlooked of the phenomena.

For a short while, on eclipse day, everyone in the path is as one, doing the one thing. Our differences recede. All might experience that vague primal dread as our lifegiving sun slowly disappears. All eyes look up at that impossibly black hole in the sky. All sense a little-bit-giddy relief, and sometimes respond with involuntary joyful tears, when the second diamond ring promises that all will return to normal. The eclipse unifies and equalizes, reducing us to our most basic, shared designation: Earthlings.