Where, when and how to watch the solar eclipse in Toronto
Anyone looking up to the sky in Toronto between 1:10 and 3:49 Monday afternoon — with the right safety glasses, of course — will see a dark shadow obscuring a part of the sun, with the small bit that's visible appearing as a crescent.
That's the effect of the solar eclipse that the city will experience.
Select areas in the American south between Oregon to South Carolina will experience a total solar eclipse, but in Toronto only around 70 per cent of the sun will be covered.
"It's one of the most extreme astronomical events that you will see," says Matt Russo, a post-doctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics.
"The only reason we can see a total eclipse at all is because of this remarkable cosmic coincidence where the moon appears the same size as the sun on our sky," said Russo. "But the thing is that the moon is actually getting further away from the earth, so in about six hundred million years there won't be anymore eclipses."
"We're living in a special period where things line up just right for this remarkable event."
Russo has been waiting 23 years to see an eclipse, since the last total eclipse in Toronto. "I was in school at the time and they didn't trust us to not stare at the sun so they locked us all inside," he said.
He'll experience the event this time around as an astrophysicist and he says eclipses offer valuable opportunities to the scientific world.
"Eclipses give you a unique window to take certain scientific data. For instance, an eclipse was used to prove Einstein's general relativity in 1919," said Russo. "When the moon blocks out the sun, you can see the corona of the sun and you can study those patterns more easily from earth-based telescopes."
The peak coverage of the eclipse will occur in Toronto at around 2:30 p.m.
A number of locations across the GTA will have organized events with eclipse glasses on hand for eager viewers.
Here are some of them:
Toronto Centre
University of Toronto Astronomy Team at the CNE
Where: The Canadian National Exhibition, Princess Margaret Fountain near the Better Living Centre.
When: 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Cost: CNE admission fare. (Children's CNE entrance tickets will cost $2 on this day)
North York
York University Solar Fair
When: 1 p.m. - 4 p.m.
Where: York University, York Lions Stadium
Cost: Free admission
Ontario Science Centre solar Eclipse Party
When: 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Where: TELUSCAPE, outside the main entrance
Mississauga
Astronomy Event with Randy Attwood
When: 1:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Where: Chappell House Lawn
Richmond Hill
York Region Astronomy: Solar Eclipse
When: 1:00 p.m. to 3:45 p.m.
Where: Richmond Hill Public Library
Cost: Free admission
Anyone who can't make it out to an event can fashion their own homemade eclipse viewer according to the Canadian Space Agency. But caution must be a priority as partial or complete blindess are risks when looking at the sun without adequate protection.
The next total solar eclipse occurring near Toronto will be in 2024, visible in the Niagara region.
