The Great American Eclipse

In just a few short hours now, the continental United States will be experiencing the most wide-spread total Solar Eclipse for almost a century. While totality- where the moon's disk matches the sun's in size and position perfectly- is common, so rarely do we get a chance to see it as a nation, from one ocean to the other.
Something else worth mentioning is how bizarre it is that we live at a time of solar eclipses. Currently, the sun is both three hundred times larger than the moon and (on average) three-hundred times farther away, giving both the same apparent size in the sky. However, this wasn't the case a few million years ago. The moon has been drifting slowly away from the Earth ever since it was created some four billion years ago, and it will keep drifting away until the sun dies. This means that, if we evolved sooner, the moon would be large enough to entirely blot out the sun's corona, and a few million years later, it would be too small for actual totality. This means that now is the perfect time to look up and see an event that's not just once-in-a-lifetime, but also even once-in-a-universe.
Traffic is going to be busy to the line of totality tomorrow (or, if you're reading this, sometime today) and there's already a massive crowd gathering just to stand in a shadow for two minutes. It sounds strange saying it that way, but this is all a good sign. The world is a big place, but we are still far from outgrowing each other. It's good to know that, every now and then, we can still come together and show that we all have the same appreciation for the world we live on and the sky that surrounds us.
...I wanted to show it more, but I couldn't find out how to host HTML5 programs anywhere.
Oh, well. I'll save it for the next centennial event. Until then, have a safe drive and viewing!
For Art!
For Science!!
FOR ADVENTURE!!!

Rendered in Photoshop