I CLAMBERED OUT of a Speedboat onto a tiny Indonesian island in the Halmahera Sea. It had taken three days of island hopping in March 2016 to find this sandy stretch of Pulau Plum, where I set up my tripod for an unobstructed view of the horizon. The sky was obscured by clouds—a bad sign, since I was there to photograph my sixth total solar eclipse. As a filmmaker, I travel the world chasing these spectacles, in which the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, fleetingly covering it. The sand cooled and the temperature dropped as planet, satellite, and star aligned. Amid the clouds, the jet-black pearl of the moon was surrounded by fiery flashes from the chromosphere, an inner layer of atmosphere at the edge of the sun. It was like staring into the eye of a dragon.Few Americans have ever witnessed this astronomical rarity, which is usually only visible from some small corner of the globe. But the total solar eclipse happening on August 21 will reveal itself in a ribbon of cities that spans the continental US—from Salem, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina—a phenomenon that hasn't occurred since 1918. You don't want to miss it.
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