Twilight will fall at midday on Monday,stars will glimmer and birds will roost in an eerie stillness asmillions of Americans and visitors witness the first total solareclipse to traverse the United States from coast to coast in 99years.
The sight of the moon´s shadow passing directly in front ofthe sun, blotting out all but the halo-like solar corona, maydraw the largest live audience for a celestial event in humanhistory.
When those watching via broadcast and online media arefactored into the mix, the spectacle will likely smash records.
"It will certainly be the most observed total eclipse inhistory," astronomer Rick Fienberg of the American AstronomicalSociety (AAS) said last week.
The eclipse begins its cross-country trajectory over thePacific Coast of Oregon in late morning.It will reach SouthCarolina´s Atlantic shore some 90 minutes later.
The total eclipse of the sun is considered one of the mostspell-binding phenomena in nature but it rarely occurs over awide swath of land, let alone one of the world´s most heavilypopulated countries at the height of summer.
In terms of audience potential, it is hard to top the UnitedStates, with its mobile and affluent population, even though thedirect path is mostly over rural areas, towns and small cities.
The largest is Nashville, Tennessee, a city of 660,000residents.
Even so the advent of social media and inexpensive high-techoptics have boosted public awareness, assuring what many U.S.experts predict will be unprecedented viewership for theso-called "Great American Eclipse.
"Some might take issue with that prediction, citing a solareclipse visible over parts of India, Nepal, Bangladesh andcentral China in July 2009.
National Geographic estimated 30million people in Shanghai and Hangzhou alone were in its paththat day.
On Monday, the deepest part of the shadow, or umbra, cast bythe moon will fall over a 70-mile-wide (113-km-wide),2,500-mile-long (4,000-km-long) "path of totality" traversing 14states.
The 12 million people who live there can view theeclipse at its fullest merely by walking outside and looking up,weather permitting.
LIVESTREAMING AND PRICE-GOUGING
Some 200 million Americans reside within a day´s drive ofthe totality zone, and as many as 7 million, experts say, areexpected to converge on towns and campgrounds along the narrowcorridor for the event.
Many are attending multiday festivalsfeaturing music, yoga and astronomy lectures.
Millions more could potentially watch in real time as theeclipse is captured by video cameras mounted on 50 high-altitudeballoons and streamed online in a joint project between NASA andMontana State University.
A partial eclipse will appearthroughout North America.Adding further to the excitement is the wide availability ofaffordable solar-safe sunglasses produced by the millions andselling so fast that suppliers were running out of stock.
The owner of one leading manufacturer reported price gougingby second-hand dealers who were buying up large supplies and
reselling them over the internet at a huge mark-up.
Not all the hoopla will unfold on dry land.Welsh popsinger Bonnie Tyler is slated to perform her 1983s hit single"Total Eclipse of the Heart" aboard a cruise liner as the vesselsails into the path of totality from Florida on Monday.
Back on the ground, forest rangers, police and city managersin the total eclipse zone are bracing for a crush of travelersthey fear will cause epic traffic jams and heighten wildfirehazards.
"Imagine 20 Woodstock festivals occurring simultaneouslyacross the nation," Michael Zeiler, an AAS advisory panel memberwrote on his website, GreatAmericanEclipse.com, referring to thefamously chaotic 1969 outdoor rock extravaganza in upstate NewYork.
Hundreds of residents in a prime-viewing area in Oregon hadto evacuate on Saturday under threat from a wildfire raging inthe Deschutes National Forest, according to InciWebfire-tracking website.
The so-called Milli Fire, which has scorched more than 7,8OOacres (3,162 hectare), is one of seven burning in Oregon,Montana and Idaho, three of the states crossed by the totalitypath.
Zeiler, an avowed "eclipse chaser" who made the 650-mile(1,046-km) drive from his New Mexico home to Wyoming for achoice view, said South Carolina is likely to see the greatestinflux as the destination state closest to the entire U.S.Eastern seaboard.
Monday´s event will be the first total solar eclipsespanning the entire continental United States since 1918 and thefirst visible anywhere in the Lower 48 states in 38 years.
The next one over North America is due in just seven years,in April 2024.