On the 21st of August, 2017, there will be a Solar Eclipse. Along a swath of the US from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast, the Eclipse will appear as "total," meaning that the sky will acutally go dark, during the day, for a couple of minutes as the Moon passes exactly between the Sun and the Earth, casting a shadow. (In other parts of the US, there will be "partial" eclipse, which is also impressive to watch with the right equipment.)
Two great tours have been made using WorldWide Telescope to explain the 2017 Eclipse.
In "The August 2017 Solar Eclipse—as Viewed in WorldWide Telescope," narrator and tour creator (and WWT Amabassador & Staff Member!) Harry Houghton explains what viewers in different parts of the US will see, and why.
In "The Great American Solar Eclipse," WWT Ambassador David Weigel (Planetarium Director at the Boyd E. Christenberry Planetarium at Samford University) and Christina Moraitis (Planeterium assistant and Senior at Samford University) show us how the eclipse works. This tour includes a beautiful animation of how the total eclipse will look near the Grand Tetons in Wyoming.
Our favorite non-WWT Eclipse video is ...
"Why a total solar eclipse is such a big deal" by Jess Fong, for Vox. This is a highly-produced piece that explains how eclipses happen, and much, much more!
Four files to let you go beyond the videos are attached below.
"see_eclipse_in_wwt_instructions.pdf" provides instructions on how to use WorldWide Telescope (on Windows) to simulate the 2017 August eclipse from any location in the US. Try it!
And, the three ".wtt" files are "Tour" files you can open in WorldWide Telescope for interactive views of of the 21 August 3017 Solar Eclipse. The file names indicate which to choose if you want the full tour, or just the partial or full eclipse views.
 | see_eclipse_in_WWT_instructions.pdf | 2.64 MB |
 | the_2017_august_eclipse_-_partial.wtt | 6.12 MB |
| the_2017_august_eclipse_-_total.wtt | 6.33 MB |
| the_2017_eclipsel.wtt | 7.39 MB |