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America's Next Solar Eclipse? 2024

"It's really, really, really, really awesome," said 9-year-old Cami Smith.

If you missed the solar eclipse on Monday, you won't need to wait another 99 years to see one.

NASA says the next total solar eclipse visible from the U.S. will take place seven years from now, on April 8, 2024. But the next full coast-to-coast eclipse won't appear until 2045.

During the 2024 eclipse, the moon's shadow will cross the U.S. border in southern Texas and move up into the eastern half of the country, passing over Dallas-Fort Worth; Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo, New York; and on to Montreal.

Curiously, it will also cross directly over Carbondale, Illinois, near the spot that experienced the longest stretch of totality during the 2017 eclipse.

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Millions of Americans who managed to catch the eclipse Monday saw the sun in the first solar eclipse visible in the U.S. since 1979 and the first to sweep the entire country from coast to coast in nearly a century.

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"It's really, really, really, really awesome," said 9-year-old Cami Smith as she watched the fully eclipsed sun from a gravel lane near her grandfather's home at Beverly Beach, Oregon.

The temperature dropped, birds quieted down, crickets chirped and the stars came out in the middle of the day as the line of darkness raced 2,600 miles across the continent in about 90 minutes, bringing forth oohs, aahs, shouts and screams.

David Avison of Lake Oswego, Oregon, began looking for a place to watch the eclipse six years ago in 2011. That's when his wife's British third cousin emailed them to announce they would be visiting for the eclipse.

Avison's wife tried to make reservations at a nearby resort that same day but they were already booked. Instead, they took an overnight train Monday from Avison's home in his Portland suburb to the Oregon State Fairgrounds.

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He says people who want to see the next eclipse in 2024 ought to make reservations now.

In Boise, Idaho, where the sun was more than 99 percent blocked, people clapped and whooped, and the street lights came on briefly, while in Nashville, Tennessee, people craned their necks at the sky and knocked back longneck beers at Nudie's Honky Tonk bar.

At the Nashville Zoo, the giraffes and rhinos started running around crazily when the sun came back. Several minor-league baseball teams -- one of them, the Columbia Fireflies, outfitted for the day in glow-in-the-dark jerseys -- briefly suspended play.

At the White House, despite all the warnings from experts about the risk of eye damage, President Trump took off his eclipse glasses and looked directly at the sun.

It was the most-observed and most-photographed eclipse in history, with many Americans staking out prime viewing spots and settling onto blankets and lawn chairs to watch, especially along the path of totality -- the line of deep shadow created when the sun is completely obscured except for the delicate ring of light known as the corona.

The shadow -- a corridor just 60 to 70 miles wide -- came ashore in Oregon and then traveled diagonally across the Midwest to South Carolina, with darkness from the totality lasting only about two to three wondrous minutes in any one spot.

For more on Monday's eclipse, go here.

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