SIU PRSSA Southern Illinois University Public Relations Student Society of America
Related Articles
The 2024 solar eclipse is a huge deal in astronomy because of its shared viewing location with the prior eclipse in North America. The best location to view the solar eclipse is going to be just south of SIU’s campus around Cedar Lake. SIU will be holding a festival for people from all around the country to gather and view the total eclipse. This is a big deal for Carbondale as it is a smaller college town. This was shown to be true During the last eclipse, when the mayor of Carbondale, Mike Henry, said “There isn’t anything else we could possibly do to bring this many people to Carbondale.” Bringing more people into Carbondale that wouldn’t normally have any reason to be there and giving more exposure to the town and university”.
Back in August 2017, there was a total solar eclipse completely visible from Carbondale, Illinois. This rare astronomical event happens when the moon passes between the sun and the earth, completely blocking the sun. This event brought thousands of people from across the country to Carbondale to experience this rare astronomical event in person. This event was so big that SIU sold out the school’s entire stadium of 15,000 seats to view the eclipse. The school was also selling dorm rooms for travelers to stay in during their visit to Carbondale. On top of this rare astronomical event the city of Carbondale looked like a festival all the way back in 2017. The town was full of different fun things to do including carnival rides, a beer tent and even a love band.
Fast forward seven years later, to the year 2024, and Carbondale is going to experience a second total solar eclipse. Carbondale will be in the path of a total solar eclipse for 4.9 seconds on April 8, 2024.This may not sound like a huge deal because it’s less than five seconds and this is going to be Carbondale’s second total eclipse in less than ten years. This occurrence is extremely rare because most places on Earth will not experience a total eclipse for over 100 years. 2024 is going to be the third solar eclipse Carbondale has experienced since 1979. Experiencing this many eclipses has earned Carbondale the nickname “the Solar Eclipse Crossroads of America.”
Carbondale is giving researchers a very rare opportunity to view and study two total eclipses only a few years apart from each other from the same location as before. This also gives many people in the southern Illinois area the normally once in a lifetime opportunity to see a total eclipse for the first time ever or even experience it for the second time. the last eclipse had nearly 50,000 eclipse and 2024 is expected to be much bigger. The 2024 eclipse event is going to be everything the 2017 event was and more being how rare the occurrence of this event is going to be.
