View the Map Selection Tool Instructions

Map Selection Tool Instructions:

This map selection tool will allow you to quickly navigate to an eclipse information page for any given state, province, city, or custom location you choose! All you have to do is click on the location you’re interested in.

Navigating the page works like other Google maps you’re used to using, in that you can scroll and pan, display a satellite image instead of a map, type a city name in the search box, or simply zoom in and click on any location you like.

VALID SELECTION REGION

If you zoom out, you’ll notice a red path that’s been drawn around North and Central America, Greenland and Iceland, the Caribbean, and a small part of northern South America. There’s also another path that’s been drawn around Hawaii. These boundaries define the region we are providing eclipse information for, and that region should be complete enough to plan your eclipse viewing activities! (If not, then we recommend you head over to Xavier Jubier’s excellent Interactive Google Map of the 2024 total eclipse!)

PATH OF TOTALITY

Within this valid selection region, we’ve included a drawing of the path of totality to help you get your bearings for the eclipse. It’s important to remember that the eclipse path extends both west and east outside our valid region, but no land is contained within the path where we haven’t drawn it.

NO ECLIPSE?

There are locations within the valid selection region where no eclipse occurs at all. If this is true for the location you select, we’ll tell you!

STATE/PROVINCE PAGES

You’ll see little gold state and province icons floating above their respective locations on the map. If you click on one of those, it will take you directly to the page we’ve made for that state/province. From there, you can see the state animation if that state/province is in the path, or you can dive right into the table of cities for that state/province and find your city that way.

We know that the gold icon is covering up much of its state or province if you’re zoomed out. If the icon is in the way and you can’t select the location you’d like, then simply zoom in! You’ll be able to zoom in enough that the icon will get out of the way – we promise! And if you’re zoomed in and the icon has moved off the screen, just zoom out and it’ll come back!

CITIES AND CUSTOM LOCATIONS

If you zoom into the map, you’ll be able to click anywhere within the valid region and see a small popup balloon. This balloon will tell you if the place you clicked on will see any of the eclipse. If so, then you’ll immediately see whether that location is in the path or not, and whether it’s close to the path in either case. (Of course, you could also tell that by just looking at the path we’ve drawn!)

But also, you’ll see the nearest town that has eclipse information in the database we’ve made. You can use that link to go directly to that city’s eclipse info page (which also includes a link to its Community Page). If there’s no city in the database within 50 miles [80km] of the location you selected, you won’t see this option.

In all cases, you’ll also see the option to view eclipse data for the exact location you selected. If you click on this option, you’ll go to a page that shows you that custom information. There won’t be a community page for it (because it’s a location and not a specific city), but the real advantage is that you’ll be able to see eclipse circumstances for the exact spot you selected. This is extremely useful in case your city is close to the edge of the path, because you won’t be relying on the location we had to choose when we made each city’s page – you’ll be using your own location!

We hope you find this method of location selection easy to use. If you have any problems with it, please let us know so we can make things right. (Be sure to include the city or lat/long information you selected, so we can reproduce the situation you found!)