Once portents of terror, eclipses are now an excuse for a party

FEW things in life are certain, but eclipses are among them. If you are on the coast of Oregon at 09:06 local time on August 21st, and if the sky is clear, you will see the sun’s disk start to develop a small, black dimple. Over the next hour this incursion will grow until, at 10:19, it will engulf the disk completely. A strange not-quite-night will descend, illuminated by the ghostly glow of the solar corona surrounding what looks, for all the world, like a hole punched through the sky into the cosmic blackness beyond. Behind you, arrayed along a ribbonlike track about 100km wide stretching all the way to the Atlantic, millions will await their own moment of witness.