Lake Tawakoni lies 45 to 60 miles east of Dallas, south of Greenville, and between Emory, Lone Oak, and Quinlan, Texas. A total solar eclipse will occur on Monday, April 8, 2024. Weather permitting, residents in the East Lake Tawakoni region are right in the path to view this eclipse. The following NASA data about the times of the eclipse is 11 months in the future, so the times listed are the predicted times of the eclipse. 

When Is The 2024 Solar Eclipse?

The path of this eclipse will travel quickly. For example, a partial eclipse begins in Dallas at 12:23 p.m. CDT and begins in Idabel, Oklahoma, at 12:28 p.m. The partial eclipse beginning to partial eclipse ending viewing opportunity will take approximately 4 minutes and 28 seconds. And East Lake Tawakoni will have the best viewing opportunities for the eclipse.

The best place to view the eclipse at East Lake Tawakoni is to go south on Rains County Road/FM 1530 from SH 276. Several Roads branch off FM 1530 between East Lake Tawakoni and the southern arm of Lake Tawakoni that stretches northward. The start time of the totality is expected at 1:42:03. 

Frequency of Solar Eclipses

A long-standing myth exists that total solar eclipses are rare once-in-a-lifetime experiences. This is simply not true. Somewhere on earth every year, two to five partial eclipses happen somewhere on earth. A total solar eclipse happens somewhere visible from different locations on the earth occurs about every 18 months. An eclipse begins when the moon passes between the earth and the sun. 

NASA publishes a webpage with tables of eclipse calendars up to the year 3,000 and dating back to 1901. The eclipses are listed in tables of decades, a twenty-year solar eclipse calendar of paths, and a century catalog, plus a map of eclipse paths. U.K. and Western Europe residents rarely see a total eclipse. The U.K. last witnessed a total eclipse on August 11, 1999.

The view of an eclipse travels from west to east. An eclipse is actually the shadow of the moon on the earth. It takes the moon 27.3 days to orbit the earth. The earth orbits around the sun. County Meath, Ireland, is home to the oldest recorded viewing of a total solar eclipse in petroglyphs, according to NASA. Thes petroglyphs date back to Nov. 30, 3340 B.C. in the Neolithic era near the Loughcrew Megalithic Monument.

Chinese scribes from Anyang, China drew their recordings of eclipses on tortoise shells and oxen shoulder blades called oracle bones. These scribes recorded their eclipses in 1226 B.C., 1198 B.C., 1172 B.C., 1163 B.C., and 1161 B.C. Along with the recordings, the scribes wrote, “The sun has been eaten.” In ancient Babylonia, today’s Syria, solar eclipses were recorded on clay tablet carvings on May 3, 1375 B.C.

The three types of solar eclipses are partial solar eclipses, total solar eclipses, and annular eclipses. You may hear annular eclipses called “ring of fire” eclipses. Ring of fire eclipses show a bright rim of the sun shining around the moon because the moon’s perceivable diameter is less that the sun’s perceivable diameter, so it looks like there is a ring of fire surrounding the moon. 

The first and one of the best solar eclipses happened in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1878. This is the first recorded total solar eclipse in Texas, according the University of North Texas’ Portal to Texas History. Seven astronomers, Leonard Waldo, R.W. Wilson, J.K. Rees, W.H. Pulsifer, F.E. Seagrave, Alfred Freeman, and A.M. Britton set up different kinds of telescopes at the S.W. Lomax farm to observe the phenomena. 

The recordings of solar eclipses throughout the history of mankind, that we know of, prove that humans have long been fascinated with solar eclipses. On June 24, 1778, astronomer David Rittenhouse recorded a total solar eclipsed and published his comments in one of the first volumes of the American Philosophical Society. That eclipse popped up in the Pacific Ocean and traveled eastward, close to Pennsylvania. 

Thomas Jefferson lived in Virginia that day. He could not view the eclipse because it was too cloudy. Jefferson wrote a letter to Rittenhouse documenting his disappointment and asked Rittenhouse to send him a more advanced timepiece “for astronomical purposes only.” We continue to show up and watch the eclipses in awe every time we are living in the path of one. 

Total Eclipse Schedule For April 8, 2024