OK, this time the news is a little more specific than would normally follow such a headline... we’re in prime viewing territory (Seth Shostak from SETI speaking):
OK, I’ve done the math. What you always suspected might be true … is true: namely that the best place in the solar system to see a total solar eclipse is Earth.
The moon, that dimpled ball of dusty rock that winds around our planet every 29 days, kindling the muse in poets and sprouting hair on werewolves, just happens to be of the right size and distance to barely cover the Sun’s disk. And, thanks to the inexorable clockwork of orbital mechanics, that circumstance results in a total solar eclipse, somewhere on our planet, about once every 1.6 years.
Remember, [most of] you’ve been here since birth!
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