With less than three weeks to go, anticipation and excitement are building for the August 21 total solar eclipse. Total solar eclipses over the continental U.S. have been rare in the past century. The last one occurred on February 26, 1979, and the last one to go coast to coast occurred on June 8, 1918. If you are under 39 years old and haven’t chased solar eclipses outside the continental U.S., then this will be a brand-new experience for you.

Here at Evolution News we are planning a series of posts leading up to and including the day of the eclipse. We will cover the history of solar eclipses and their scientific importance, as well as ASTRO 101 primers on their mechanics and safe viewing methods. Wait, did we leave something out? Oh yes, we will also cover the intelligent design aspects of solar eclipses!

To kick off the series, let’s start with a list of helpful information resources. The first is the solar eclipse web site brought to you by the American Astronomical Society (AAS), Solar Eclipse Across America. This really is a one-stop web shop for everything eclipse. They cover safe viewing methods and gadgets, phone apps, group activities and events, weather, and many other topics (except the design aspects).

Speaking of apps, Eclipse Safari is available for both iOS and Android.

The other main web resource is NASA’s solar eclipse site. It has pretty much the same information as the AAS web site, but it is worth checking out too.

Image credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.