Eclipse-mania is sweeping across America this week and eclipse-chasers are hitting the road to put themselves along its centerline where they can best witness first-hand this rare phenomenon.
While all of North America will see at least a partial eclipse, a 73-mile-wide band stretching from Oregon to South Carolina will experience “totality,” when the moon slides in front of the sun.
Astronomers call this occurrence syzygy, which is when one astronomical objects perfectly alligns with another one. It comes from the Greek word suzugos, meaning “yoked together.” And it’s worth 25 points in Scrabble.
In Page, the eclipse will reach about 80 percent of totality.
The American Automobile Association is calling the days surrounding the eclipse “the biggest outdoor event in the U.S. this summer.” As of press Tuesday, AAA hadn’t yet released an estimate of how many people they expect to be traveling but said they expect it to rival, if not surpass, any Thanksgiving or Christmas traffic in recent years. Their Arizona website said, “Traffic jams could be massive.”
Dr. Angela Speck, University of Missouri Columbia professor of astrophysics and co-chair of the 2017 National Eclipse Taskforce, is predicting Monday’s eclipse will be the biggest space event since the Apollo missions.
“Think about what it would be like in a city that wins the Super Bowl and the World Series at the same time, but it’s like that across a band of the country that’s 70 miles wide and 3,000 miles long,” Speck said. “That’s how busy it’s going to be.”
And for good reason. Witnessing a total eclipse of the sun is a very rare event for the majority of humanity, and those who have seen one say it’s the single greatest natural phenomena they’ve ever seen, ranking it even higher than seeing an aurora borealis.
Poet Emily Dickinson witnessed a total eclipse of the sun from a balcony in Tripoli, Greece. It took her some time to process those two minutes when darkness became visible.

“Nothing had prepared me for the visceral sense of unease as the sunlight faded under a cloudless sky,” she later wrote. “In the final moments before totality, as the crescent sun dwindled to a sliver of light, I looked towards the horizon and saw a wall of darkness rushing towards me: the shadow of the moon travelling at more than 1,000 miles an hour. No one had told me that the sky would take on such an intense shade of indigo, or that the moon would seem like a black hole punched into the heavens. Around it the wispy halo of the sun’s outer atmosphere was the purest white imaginable, while, angling off to one side, the planets Mercury, Venus and Mars stood in a line like an astronomer’s diagram. After four long minutes, when the first dazzling beam of sunshine erupted from behind the moon’s disc, I realized with surprise that I had been crying.”
This will be the first total solar eclipse visible from the contiguous United States since February 1979. The last time a total eclipse was visible coast to coast in the U.S. was nearly a century ago, in June 1918.
Of course, one of the first things that should be noted when discussing our moon eclipsing our sun is the odd coincidence that the moon is four hundred times smaller than the sun, yet happens to hover exactly four hundred times nearer. This creates an optical illusion that makes the two disks appear to be the same size.
Some of the more advanced ancient cultures, such as the Aztecs and the Babylonians, were particularly obsessed with their astronomical observations and calculations. Enough so, that they were able to predict all future major astronomical events.
The ancient Babylonians were particularly adept at this branch of science. They noticed that although some sort of eclipse happens every year, the exact same type of eclipse returns after precisely 18 years and 11 and one-third days. The accuracy of this observation remains very impressive, especially because that one-third-of-a-day business means that the next eclipse can only be seen in an entirely different region of the world. The Babylonian astronomers named this 18 year, 11 and one third day period a Saros. Eventually the Babylonians passed this knowledge on to the Greeks, who, lacking a better term for the  phenomenon simply adopted the Babylonian word of Saros.  
Science writer Bob Berman explains a Saros and its application better than anyone else.
He explains in an article for Wired magazine, “The Saros’s third-of-a-day feature means that the earth turns through 120 degrees of longitude before the next eclipse in that particular Saros takes place. Therefore, for an eclipse with specific properties (such as total versus partial, long versus short, and tropical versus arctic) to make a repeat appearance in any particular region, one has to wait while eclipses work their way around the world like a set of gears, which requires three Saroses — a length of time equal to fifty-four years and around one month, or, more precisely, 33 days.
“Because this surpassed human life expectancy in that era four thousand years ago, it’s astonishing that the cycle was noticed at all. This three-Saros interval is called the exeligmos, which is Greek for “turning of the wheel.” Using the exeligmos, we can calculate that there must have been a total solar eclipse in the United States 54 years and one month before the 2017 event and 54 years and one month before the 2024 event. Sure enough, a total eclipse in Maine unfolded in 1963, and another one amazed onlookers when it raced up the East Coast and covered Virginia Beach and Nantucket on March 7, 1970.”
And that’s just the science, which is amazing enough. But to experience a total eclipse on a visceral level is something else entirely.    
During totality, the sky will darken enough for stars to become visible and temperatures will drop enough to be noticeably felt. The Corona Borealis — solar flares erupting from the sun’s surface — will be visible to the naked eye. Birds return to their nests. Crickets starts chirping. Bats fly from their dens.
And there are several other strange and more subtle phenomena that will also occur during this Monday’s eclipse.      
Before the eclipse reaches totality, go to a nearby tree and look down at the ground at the shadows cast by the tree.
There you will see hundreds of crescent eclipses from the partially eclipsed sun cast on the ground. This phenomena is caused by the gaps between the tree’s leaves which act on the same principle as a pinhole camera and project the sun’s image on the ground.
Also watch for the Diamond Ring Affect. The slight bit of sun remaining just before totality will give the impression of a brilliant diamond, with the ring being the faint glow given off by the darkened moon.
Sixty to 90 seconds before totality, and transversely when totality ends, closely observe any white or flat-light surface around you and you’ll see a very strange sight. You’ll see some dark lines, called shadow bands, racing back and forth across the surfaces on which they fall. These shadowy lines are caused by the sunlight peeking around the moon’s mountains and through its valleys, while turbulence in  Earth’s atmosphere causes them to shift position.
The eclipse will begin at 9:13 Arizona time.
The National Park Service and the Natural History Association will hold an eclipse viewing on the lawn in front of the Carl Hayden Visitor’s Center from 9 a.m. to noon. They’ll have telescopes set up — equipped with eclipse-safe filters — for viewing.
You can purchase eclipse-rated glasses for $2 from the Glen Canyon Natural History Association at the bookstore at the Carl Hayden Visitors center, but they’re going fast.