Spooky facts about the total solar eclipse

I. Have you ever heard of shadow snakes (also known as shadow bands)? These are mysterious shadowy figures that wriggle like snakes that have been known to appear on surfaces near the ground seconds before a total solar eclipse (or when the moon completely covers the sun, and the moments just after, as the moon starts to get out of the way again):

(The photo above was taken by Franz Kerchbaum at the Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Wien in Austria).

II. Scientists still don’t fully understand what they are! Some scientists say that the shadow bands resemble the twinkling stars: but they’re not actually twinkling - volatile pockets of air affect our perception of the stars back on the ground, giving them a shimmering, twinkling appearance when we look up at the sky. Shadow bands were first described in the 9th century CE - in the Völuspá, part of the old Icelandic poetic edda.

Because of the moon’s slowly increasing orbit, NASA believes the moon will have moved far enough away from Earth in that time frame​ that it will no longer be big enough to entirely cover the sun and there will be no more total solar eclipses in about 600 million years.

III. You would need to travel at roughly 2,400 mph to chase the moon's shadow!

IV. First big city the eclipse hit in Oregon was Salem; Salem was named after Jerusalem.

V. Carbondale, Illinois, experienced the longest duration of total eclipse, more than 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

VI. St. Malachy was an Irish Archbishop of Armagh who died in 1148, and left behind a list of future 112 Popes that has amazed some with its remarkable accuracy.
St., Malachy used a short phrase in Latin to describe each Pope. For Pope John Paul II, he used the Latin expression “Laboris Solis” — or translated “From the labor of the sun” — an expression meaning a SOLAR ECLIPSE.

John Paul II was the only known pope to be born on the day of a solar eclipse — and he was buried on the day of a solar eclipse.

A near total eclipse was seen across Europe on May 18, 1920, the day he was born in Poland. And on April 8, 2005, the day of the Pope’s funeral, a partial solar eclipse blotted out most of the sun and darkened a wide area of the world, from the South Pacific to the Western Hemisphere.

VII. Pink Floyd's famous song "Eclipse":